The Qur'an Revealed: A Critical Analysis of Said Nursi's Epistles of Light [1 ed.] 9783940924285, 9783940924292, 9783940924902

Citation preview

The Qur’an Revealed: A Critical Analysis of Said Nursi’s Epistles of Light

Colin Turner The Qur’an Revealed: A Critical Analysis of Said Nursi’s Epistles of Light With a Foreword by Dale F. Eickelman

GerlachPress

First published 2013 by Gerlach Press Heilbronner Strasse 10, 10711 Berlin, Germany www.gerlach-press.de Cover Design: www.brandnewdesign.de, Hamburg Printed and bound in Germany by Freiburger Graphische Betriebe www.fgb.de © Gerlach Press 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced, or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any other information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Bibliographic data available from Deutsche Nationalbibliothek http://d-nb.info/1033008222

ISBN: 978-3-940924-28-5 (hardcover volume) ISBN: 978-3-940924-29-2 (ePDF) ISBN: 978-3-940924-90-2 (eBook)

This work is dedicated with love, respect and gratitude to Faris Kaya.

Nursi in meditation Courtesy of Refet Kavukçu

Contents

Acknowledgementsix Foreword 

xi

By Dale F. Eickelman Introduction1 1. On Divine Unity

9

2. Existence and Entities

55

3. On Nature and Causation

95

4. On Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels

133

5. Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’

173

6. Revelation and Prophethood

191

7. The Quran and Muhammad

203

8. The Hereafter

245

9. Belief and Unbelief

283

10. On Worship and Righteous Action

301

11. Spirituality

337

12. On Divine Determining and Free Will

363

13. On Sincerity and Brotherhood

399

vii

The Qur’an Revealed  14. On Love

433

15. Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology

465

16. Civilization

513

17. Politics

537

18. On jihad

557

Notes571 Index615

viii

Acknowledgements

Writing is arguably the loneliest art, and when a book takes the best part of two years to complete, as this one did, the isolation that so huge an undertaking engenders often verges on the unbearable. Without exaggeration, therefore, I can say that had it not been for the support and advice of friends, colleagues and family members, this project might never have been completed. To cite all of those who have helped in some way would require a separate chapter. They all know who they are, however, and I am sure they understand that their contributions would not be diminished by the absence of names on paper. Nevertheless, invidious though it may be to single people out, I cannot let this opportunity pass without showing my appreciation to those who have been around me for most or all of the duration of the project. First and foremost I owe my deepest debt of gratitude to my dear friend and mentor, Professor Faris Kaya, Director of the Istanbul Foundation for Science and Culture, who has been a constant source of encouragement and support throughout the writing of the book. I know how dear to his heart this project is, and I hope that by writing what he believes is a much needed companion volume to the Risale-i Nur, I have been able to go some way towards fulfilling his expectations. A special mention must also go to Dr Cuneyt Șimșek, who, once I had identified the themes that I wished to work on, located and provided me with all of the relevant sections of the Risale herein included. His help was truly invaluable and I cannot thank him enough. I would also like to thank all of the friends and acquaintances who, during the course of the writing of this book, contributed in their own ways to its fruition, be it through simple words of encouragement or the provision of obscure references and guidance on source material. Special thanks go to Hasan Hörküc, Dusmamat Karimov, Bilal Demir and Kadir Ejderha, whose knowledge of the Risale is such that I was able to call on all of them whenever my own ability to navigate Nursi’s work successfully, be it to find some obscure reference or to locate a particularly elusive phrase or sentence, proved wanting.

ix

The Qur’an Revealed  I also owe a debt of gratitude to the many friends with whom, throughout the duration of this project, I have discussed various theological and philosophical issues connected with the Risale. Their valuable insights, comments and observations all count as contributions to the book and are thus prized beyond value. Particular thanks must go to Faruk and Belgin Özalp, Hasan and Halide Hörküc, Mehdi and Zahra Shalchi, Eslam el-Soudani, Ali-Reza Bhojani, Mostafa Benzekhoufra, Hakan Gülerce, Ahmet Selcuk, Bilal Kușpɩnar, Alparslan Açɩkgenç, Yunus Çengel, Abdolaziz Daftari, Murat Besnek, Kerem Șerbetçi and Turhan Yolcu. Turhan, it should be noted, deserves particular thanks for helping me with the proofreading of the finished manuscript – a Herculean task at which he excelled and for which I cannot thank and commend him enough. Last but not least I would like to thank my dear wife, Mahshid, and my children, not only for their love and encouragement but also for their faith in the project. Mahshid is not only a wife and best friend, she is also an exacting critic of my work, and the effort she has expended on reading and critiquing the various drafts of my chapters has been of inestimable value and is appreciated beyond measure.

x

Foreword

Bediüzzaman Saïd Nursi’s writings are foundational texts. They speak to the audiences of the time in which they were created, but also speak to succeeding generations—in Nursi’s case both in the original Turkish and through translation for new audiences in other languages. In translation, Nursi’s writings are often accompanied by sensitive introductory essays on how to comprehend Nursi, the appeal to his original audience, and his lasting significance. Colin Turner’s analysis of Nursi’s Epistles of Light presents Nursi’s commentary on the Qur’an in an especially interesting manner for an English-speaking audience. Some Qur’anic commentaries adhere specifically to the text in question. Qur’anic commentary (tafsir) is an established Muslim genre for thinking about the basics of faith, belief and existence. Often, however, the original text serves as a touchstone for thinking about wider issues merely inspired by the original text. In this sense, Nursi’s Epistles of Light is “good to think with” (bon à penser), to borrow a phrase from Claude Lévi-Strauss. The topics of Nursi’s epistles—including nature and causality, belief and unbelief, righteous action, sincerity and brotherhood, love, and politics—cover the gamut of human existence and reflections on humankind’s place in the universe. Colin Turner’s The Qur’an Revealed is a remarkable exercise in “thick description,” a method of inquiry popularly associated with Clifford Geertz, that places a text or set of events in a context that allows outsiders to understand its significance. Moreover, Turner’s text emulates Nursi’s in style. Turner basically offers a commentary on Said’s commentary, explaining the context of Nursi’s ideas, attempting the Herculean task of “reflecting the ebbs and flows of Nursi’s own personal intellectual and spiritual development over time.” Turner projects us into the past and leads us into Nursi’s world, and the incremental transformation of what many call the “old Said” into the “new Said.” We benefit from Turner’s close reading of the Epistles, which takes us into Said’s constantly developing world of ideas. Many critical commentaries double as lapidary guides to the original. Turner invites us, as did Nursi in the original Epistles, to slow down and

xi

The Qur’an Revealed  reflect on the broader significance of words, events and things. Turner’s approach invites the reader to a slower, more focused pace away from the invocation of a large number of external texts and secondary sources. It is hard to think of a more apt companion to Nursi’s Epistles of Light. Dale F. Eickelman Dartmouth College (USA)

xii

Introduction

Locating Said Nursi

If the definitive history of twentieth century Islamic movements is ever written, one wonders whether its author would be both perspicacious and brave enough to argue a point which, while held in private by many Muslim thinkers and writers, is rarely if ever mooted openly, namely that the ‘Islamic resurgence’ which is said to have occurred over the past forty or fifty years, should be seen primarily in terms of a resurgent identity that has little to do with any surge of interest in, or affiliation to, the faith beneath Islam per se. One presumes that Muslims have not suddenly become better believers or more proficient in their outward expressions of submission, although clearly this may have happened in various individual cases. What does appear to have occurred in the Muslim world, however, is a sustained attempt on the part of certain groups to reassert their collective identity in the face of external threats. Some have accentuated their inextricable ties – be they religious, cultural or a mix of the two – to Islam, while others have taken advantage of the centrality of Islam to the socio-political and cultural dynamics of the Muslim world in order to advance their own political and ideological agendas. As Muhammad Shabistari points out, seen in this way, the numerous movements of the past 150 years, characterised almost without exception as ‘Islamic movements’, have had little if anything to do with the resurgence of religious faith as such. Most of these, Shabistari argues, have actually been political movements, with leaders whose underlying goal has been to solve a specific problem: the problem of the perceived backwardness of the Muslim peoples and their subservience, politically and culturally, to the West.1 While none of the groups that operate within the definitional matrix of ‘Islamic movements’ can claim to be identifiable primarily as a faith movement, various individuals have appeared sporadically with the avowed aim of fostering renewal of belief – often to the extent of dedicating their whole life’s work to that aim - and around some of these individuals, movements of considerable size and import have accreted. Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1876-1960) is one such individual.2

1

The Qur’an Revealed  To say that Nursi stands like a colossus above twentieth-century Muslim scholarship in Turkey is no overstatement. And, as with all intellectual heavyweights in the arena of religious thought, it is no surprise that opinions on him are divided – sometimes starkly so. For some of his disciples and admirers, who now number in their millions, Said Nursi was the ‘renewer’ (mujaddid) of the fourteenth century AH – the most recent in a long line of ‘renewers’ who, according to a Prophetic tradition, would appear at the end of each century to revive Islam and interpret the tenets of the Quran in accordance with the understanding and demands of the day. Thus did he earn for himself the honorific ‘Bediüzzaman’ or ‘nonpareil of the age’. As such he was deemed to be the saviour of an Islam in Turkey that, it was believed, had been ravaged by the onslaught of atheistic materialism and Kemalist nationalism; the most proficient Muslim theologian and exegete in the modern era; and the founder of the most influential text-based faith community – Nurculuk – in the history of Turkey and, indeed, of the modern Muslim world. For many of his detractors, however, there is far more to Nursi than meets the eye. To some he was a hypocrite and a liar, and one whose life was full of contradictions; to others a Kurd in the pay of communists and an overt proponent of anarchy. He is reviled for his opposition to the secularising reforms of the Turkish Republic, for his involvement in ‘reactionary’ activities, and for the fact that he possessed little in the way of formal – i.e. secular – education. Yet despite this polarity of opinion, both supporters and detractors alike would no doubt agree that Nursi is arguably the most important and influential scholar to emerge from Turkey in the past five hundred years. Yet over half a century after his death, Nursi continues to defy any attempts to locate him precisely within the generally accepted milieu of ‘Muslim scholars.’ While his magnum opus, the Risale-i Nur (‘The Epistles of Light’) is for all intents and purposes a commentary on the Quran, it is not a work of exegesis in the technical sense of the word, although he was clearly an accomplished exegete. And while Nursi was wellversed in the principles of scholastic theology (kalām) and the methods of the theologians, and devotes the lion’s share of the Risale to what he claims are rational proofs for the unity (tawhīd) of God, it is not a work of traditional theology either. In fact, on one level, the Risale is as resistant to compartmentalisation as the Quran itself, which it claims to mirror and to elucidate. And if, as Nursi often asserts, the aim of the Quran is to guide man to belief, then the teachings of the Risale should be seen as consonant with that aim. The three supreme matters in the worlds of humanity and Islam are belief, the sharī’a, and life. Since the truths of belief are the greatest of these, the Risale-i Nur’s select and loyal students avoid politics with abhorrence so that they should not be made the tool to other currents and subject to other forces, and those diamond-like Quranic truths not reduced to fragments of glass in the view of those who sell or exploit religion for the world, and so that they can carry out to the letter the duty of saving belief, the greatest duty.3

Part of Nursi’s appeal lay in his uncompromising belief that it is belief (īmān) which must be renewed and protected, and that all other endeavours must be approached with the primacy of belief in mind: the fact that, unlike many of the popular Muslim thinkers of his own epoch, he repudiated the dubious art of politics – and, more importantly,

2

  Introduction the dubious art of politicking that is buttressed by religion – earned him respect and conferred on him a sense of authenticity that would perhaps be found wanting in so many other Muslim thinkers. Another part of his appeal lay in his shrewd interpretation of the forces ranged against him. For Nursi, unlike many of the Muslim scholars, leaders and ideologues who came later, realised that if there is a conflict between Islam – or belief – and modernity, it is not a conflict fought over issues of government or technology, over science or democracy. As Nursi’s own evaluation of the problems facing the Muslim world shows, the conflict is ultimately over transcendence, with the post-Enlightenment experiment claiming a centrality in the universe’s affairs for man that Islam, with its emphasis on the dependence of man on God, cannot countenance. Man is faced with a choice: belief in the sovereignty of God or belief in the sovereignty of man, with all that such a choice entails. For Nursi, the way to salvation consists solely in choosing the Other over the self, and it is in the dynamics of this choice that the key to an understanding of Nursi’s take on spirituality may be found. For the Risale-i Nur is not only a mystic’s take on systematic theology but also a work which opens up a window onto the elusive phenomenon that is Muslim spirituality, or, more precisely, the very spirit of revelation that is the Quran, Nursi’s first and last source of inspiration and enlightenment. But what is meant here by spirituality? Well, the extent to which any discussion on spirituality can succeed – be it in the context of Islam in general, or Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nur in particular – depends on the degree to which the definitional opacity surrounding the term can be cleared. There are as many approaches to, and manifestations of, Islam as there are Muslims, and the same applies, of course, to the notion of ‘Islamic spirituality’. Definitions of ‘spirituality’ abound: like the term ‘mysticism’, overuse has rendered it almost inutile, particularly in Western secular milieus, where it is employed to denote anything and everything – from deep, personal communion with the God of monotheism to the vague feelings of ‘religiosity’ claimed by those who do not adhere to any institutionalised faith yet continue somehow to feel at one with a ‘higher force’. However, while we need to steer clear of the more essentialist a priori conceptions of the term ‘spirituality’ – particularly those which, in the context of Islam at least, connote some kind of false division between the ‘material’ and the ‘spiritual’, or, more misleadingly still, between the ‘worldly’ and the ‘religious’ – discussion cannot take place in a vacuum. Arguably the most convenient and germane place to locate the basic premises upon which a workable definition of the ‘spiritual’ in Islam can be found is the Quran itself. If the word ‘spiritual’ means ‘connected to or concerning the spirit’, then the Islamic revelation makes it abundantly clear that the human spirit is an ‘uncreated’ entity, ‘breathed’ into man by God himself. Man’s spirit is thus that it is the uncreated ‘breath of the Compassionate’ (nafas al-rahmān) within him that connects him to the divine, and that transforms an otherwise transient material being into the ‘vicegerent’ (khalīfa) of God on earth, capable of rising above all other beings to take his rightful place in eternity the ‘highest of the high’. In the Quranic – and, by extension, the Nursian – schema, spirituality involves man’s quest to uncover the reflection of the divine within himself. The existential dilemma of man as the supreme locus of Divine manifestation – the ‘supreme Sign’, no less – is the central pillar of the Risale-i Nur, the theme around which all other themes are arranged.

3

The Qur’an Revealed  The creation of human beings took place, it is held, not merely that they should affirm the existence of a Creator and bow down to His laws through various rites and rituals: for Nursi, God is not merely a principle that is to be accepted, or a giver of laws who is to be obeyed. While the God of the Quran is infinite, absolute, theoretically unfathomable and ultimately unreachable in the very real sense of those terms, He can, Nursi assures us, be understood through His creation and, more importantly, His reality can be gradually ‘uncovered’ by man, who is able to approach God and become ever more aware of what He is simply by virtue of the fact that he is created in imago Dei, with the capability of communion with the very Source of his own being. In the cosmology adumbrated by the Quran, and confirmed by the Risale-i Nur, man is the reflection whose purpose in life is to perceive and understand the Reflected, and by so doing solve the perennial riddle of his own being. Quranic – and, by extension, Nursian - spirituality is therefore not about becoming more God-like. In fact it would appear to be quite the reverse. It is about realising that those attributes in man which appear to make him like a God belong in reality to another. The ‘spiritual journey’ of man towards God, then, is not about becoming more like Him; rather, it is about ‘purifying’ oneself of all possible claims to ‘Godlikeness’ and making room for Him to reveal Himself through the medium of the spiritualised soul. It means not acting like Him, but acting in His name; it involves not being like Him, but manifesting or revealing Him. Man has been created to open and unveil (the treasuries of Divine Names and Attributes), be a luminous sign (guiding to God), receive and reflect (Divine manifestations),be a light-giving moon reflecting the Eternal Power, and be a mirror for the manifestations of the Eternal Beauty.4

For ‘manifestation’ to be realised, one has to clear out the ‘clutter of the self ’ – the imaginary ownership that man exercises over his own attributes – so that His ‘image’ may be reflected in the mirror of man’s being. It is this ‘handing back’ or ‘surrender’ to God of man’s imaginary ownership over his own self that forms the bedrock of Nursi’s approach to the ‘spiritual’, and the conceptual heart of the Risale-i Nur.

On the Risale-i Nur

With the individual treatises which comprise the work described variously as ‘rays’, ‘gleams’ and ‘flashes’, the Risale models itself as a sort of hermeneutical prism, catching what its author considers to be the effulgence of divine light from the Quran and refracting it as colours visible to, and understandable by, the eye of the human heart. Inspired by the sense of drama which underpins the landscaping of his work, and by his description of the Quran as a six-sided entity,5 I suggest that we approach the Risale as one would a building. In fact, the Risale is not one building, but a whole complex of edifices, constructed at various points along the author’s career. In the West it remains largely unknown, although there have been attempts in recent years to excavate it, rather as one would some fabulous desert palace, lost for years beneath the sands and uncovered gradually, brick by brick. As such, the complex is largely intact. True, the earlier structures – those which date to Nursi’s formative

4

  Introduction period, when the self-styled ‘Old Said’ was by his own admission preoccupied with the natural sciences and speculative philosophy – are showing signs of wear and tear. The more recent additions to the complex, however, are as impressive now as they must have been when first erected. Nevertheless, many of the buildings which make up the complex remain unexplored, and even those which have been open to the public for years contain rooms, passages and tunnels that remain locked to this day. While the extended allegory of the Risale as a complex of buildings may appear to be little more than a decorative literary conceit, it is not without its utility. It is in keeping with Nursi’s own extensive and often flamboyant use of allegory and metaphor, and reminds us that he was first and foremost a communicator, with a communicator’s sense of what best facilitates understanding of the message being communicated. It also conveys something of the unity of composition and design which underpins the Risale, with each of its component structures adding strength and sense of purpose to the other, while contributing to a whole that is most definitely more than just the sum of its parts. More importantly, the allegory allows us to think in terms of the ‘spiritual architecture’ of the Risale, and to offer an overview of those crucial aspects of the Nursian Weltanschauung which inform the work and bestow upon its unique character. Like the foundations, pillars and buttresses which support St Paul’s Cathedral, say, or Sultanahmet, there are certain features in the Risale which stand out as key to the whole complex. I have identified eighteen of them. And although these eighteen concepts are not the only ‘pillars’ holding up the edifice of the Risale, they are, I believe, the most conducive to our understanding of what this methodologically fascinating piece of extended Quranic exegesis is all about. They are also woefully understudied, and it is to be hoped that this tour through the buildings of the Risale-i Nur will prompt further research in these areas. The themes opened up in this book constitute, to my mind at least, the defining features of Nursi’s worldview, and the central pillars which support his teachings. That they are key to Nursi’s perception of the Quranic message is understood from the centrality of one or more of these concepts to each and every treatise which goes to make up the complex of epistles known as the Risale. They are concepts which, when understood as a unity, offer a framework in which the Creator/created relationship can best be understood. And it is the decipherment and deconstruction of man’s position vis-à-vis the Ground of his being that provides the opportunity for communion, which is the objective of all spiritual endeavour. Without the Nursian conception of the human ‘I’, for example, his exposition of the Divine Names is little more than eloquent but ultimately meaningless gnostic theology, while without the repudiation of efficient causality, Nursi’s teachings on the wiles and deceits of the human ‘I’ lose most if not all of their potency. Without the repudiation of secondary causality, Nursi’s fascinating exposition of Quranic angelology would lose its impact, while without his treatise on angels and spirit beings, his exposition of Divine Unity would be found wanting, and so on. Each pillar lends credence to the other, and to Nursi’s overarching spiritual edifice as a whole. Each of the eighteen pillars represents a concept or an amalgam of concepts, sufficient knowledge and understanding of which Nursi clearly deems essential for man in his quest for meaning, authenticity and salvation, and central to his attempt to solve man’s most pressing existential dilemmas. These concepts may not have been originated by Nursi

5

The Qur’an Revealed  himself, although it is tempting to consider them his by virtue of the innovative, eloquent and highly idiosyncratic way that he expresses them.6 Furthermore, they are concepts which, despite their importance, have not received the kind of scholarly attention they warrant. While important work has now begun on the Risale, with commendable exploratory studies such as Islam At The Crossroads preparing the ground for future endeavours, it is still almost completely virgin territory.7 Whether the concepts which comprise the eighteen ‘pillars’ under scrutiny here are of crucial importance for every individual is a matter of personal belief and private conscience. On a purely academic level, however, they are concepts which researchers in the field of contemporary Muslim thought cannot afford to overlook. From the tenor of his writing, there can be little doubt that they are concepts which Nursi himself considered seminal – not only in the sense of their centrality to his own Weltanschauung, but also as conceptual foundations for an authentic interpretation of the Islamic revelation and, consequently, a hermeneutic of the cosmic narrative which, as Nursi suggests, man has no option but to try to decipher. As such, unless these concepts are subjected to rigorous critical appraisal by philosophers, sociologists and psychologists of religion, as well as theologians and scholars of Islamic gnosis, the surface of the Risale will remain barely scratched, and, in the West at least, Nursi’s magnum opus will continue to be seen as little more than a fascinating yet poorly-understood curio.

On the writing of The Quran Revealed

The present work is in a sense the culmination in prose of investigations into the writings of Said Nursi which I began more than three decades ago. For many years now I have been promising a volume on Nursi which would not only throw light on his teachings but which would also help to bring this fascinating and highly idiosyncratic thinker to much wider lay and scholarly attention. In 2010 I received a grant from the Istanbul Foundation for Science and Culture which enabled me to take a break from university teaching and devote the best part of eighteen months to the writing of this book. Without the support of the Foundation, and the encouragement of its Director, Professor Faris Kaya, it is doubtful that The Quran Revealed could ever have been written. In the course of a year and a half I was able to put together some eighteen chapters dealing with the teachings of Said Nursi as presented in the Risale. The original working title – The Major Themes of the Risale-i Nur – was, owing to its bleak prosaicness, later discarded and, after considerable soul-searching, the far more apposite The Quran Revealed chosen as its replacement. The rationale behind this was, besides marketing considerations, Nursi’s own admission that the Risale-i Nur was intended to serve as a mirror in which the light of the Quran would be caught and reflected. In my opinion, Nursi’s life work was the elucidation of Quranic teachings; what better title, then, than one which sought to capture that life work in as short and evocative a manner as possible? This is not the first book that has been written in the still relatively new field of ‘Nursi Studies’, but it is the first monograph dedicated to showcasing the central teachings of the Risale-i Nur. Moreover it is billed as a work of ‘critical analysis’, which again sets it apart somewhat from works which have gone before it. It is relatively easy to have Nursi say what one wants him to say. Critics and disciples alike have quoted from the Risale selectively for

6

  Introduction years, and recent scholars – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – have continued along the same path. Given the diversity of themes covered by Nursi, and the twists and turns of perspective that characterise his writing, it is a relatively simple matter to choose words that pertain to a certain perspective, or to some perspectives, and to claim that it is Nursi’s view of things. Indeed, this may well be the truth, but the simple fact is that Nursi has many other views as well. If we make no attempt to take those views into consideration, we run the risk of misrepresenting him. The best way to ensure that Nursi is not misrepresented is, of course, to allow him to speak for himself, and arguably the surest way of doing that would, of course, be simply to translate his works and have done with. Yet there are certain problems which make this route a difficult one to follow. There are, it has to be said, some excellent translations of Nursi’s major works available. Şukran Vahide’s English rendering of Nursi’s Words, Flashes, Rays and Letters has proven to be an invaluable means of access to the Risale, and, as such, has been central to the growth of Nursi studies in the English-speaking world. But its high quality notwithstanding, this ground-breaking translation is in some regards a victim of its own success, with fidelity prized above transparency to the extent that the target language is often stretched beyond its capacity, producing a text which, while always scrupulously faithful to the original, is often highly unidiomatic and at times frustratingly opaque. Another problem is that the translator needs to understand what Nursi is saying, and while Vahide’s translation shows that her grasp of the Risale is a firm one, the same cannot be said of the other, more idiomatic translations of Nursi’s writings that are available.8 The compromise solution which I think best serves the goal of introducing Nursi’s work to a wider, English-speaking audience is to combine English renderings of key sections of Nursi’s work with a critical evaluation of those sections, the aim being to place his discussions in the context not only of the overall project that is the Risale-i Nur but also of the topics that he is discussing. By so doing, we are hopefully able to achieve two things. Firstly, by locating his treatment of a particular topic within the wider matrix of discourses that make up the Risale, we allow Nursi to interpret himself. And secondly, by viewing his discussions against the general backdrop of their topics, we are able to understand where Nursi’s teachings converge with, or at times diverge from, those of his counterparts, both past and present. The present work is thus an attempt to invite the reader into Said Nursi’s own world in a language accessible to informed non-specialists and with an approach that is critically evaluative. In writing The Quran Revealed, I have tried to avoid any preconceptions as to what Said Nursi should be saying or, indeed, what he has to say. Instead, my goal has been to ‘open up’, as far as I have been able, his teachings as they are actually found in the Risale-i Nur. I have tried to do this in a way that does justice to his concerns rather than our own, although it is not difficult to see that what concerned Nursi half a century ago is equally of concern to us today. For the most part, I have tried to extract the essence of what Nursi is saying on a number of themes. The choice of those themes has to a certain extent been suggested by Nursi himself; there are, after all, topics in his work which stand out like a proverbial sore thumb, despite the fact that individual treatises have not been dedicated to them: the issue of Divine unity is a prime example. Other discussions – the hereafter, for example,

7

The Qur’an Revealed  or the issue of Divine determining and freewill – have portions of the Risale dedicated to them especially, thus suggesting themselves for inclusion by virtue of the fact that they were singled out for special attention by Nursi himself. Each chapter of The Quran Revealed deals with one main topic or area of Nursi’s discourse, with relevant passages taken from different parts of the Risale, grouped together and subjected to analysis. What emerges is a kind of discursive duet, with Nursi’s discussions and this author’s interpretations of those discussions weaving in and out of each other like the warp and weft of a woven fabric. I am, of course, acutely aware of the shortcoming of my own explanations of Nursi’s teachings. While I claim a background in Muslim theology, philosophy and mysticism, I cannot claim to understand everything that Nursi is talking about and would therefore not presume to present this work as the definitive commentary on the Risale-i Nur. All I can say is that the book has been written in what I hope is good faith, and with as open a mind as possible to the soundness, ‘Islamically’ speaking, of Nursi’s teachings and his place in the pantheon of Muslim thinkers. As such, if it throws even a glimmer of light on the Risale-i Nur and helps to bring this fascinating and innovative ‘mystic theologian’ to wider scholarly and popular attention, it will have been worth the time and effort. Colin Turner Durham, July 2013

8

Chapter One On Divine Unity Introduction

The main focal point of the Quranic worldview, and the cornerstone upon which the whole edifice of Muslim religious thought has been founded, is the notion of tawh.  īd, or the declaration of ‘Divine unity’. There is, as many Western writers have pointed out, an uncompromising monotheism at the heart of the Islamic revelation which distinguishes Islam from other major religions. This is not to say that, in theory at least, the unity of God is any less a reality in, say, Christianity or Judaism, than it is in Islam. Traditionally, however, the emphasis on Divine unity in Muslim theology has far outweighed the attention paid to this concept by theologians in other faiths. That there is one God, and that all created beings are created by and attributable to Him alone, is to express the concept of tawh.  īd at its simplest level, uncluttered by the jargon of the theologians, who argued and debated the nature of Divine unity for several centuries after the death of Muhammad. This simple expression of Divine unity is one which can be read in and between every line of the Quran, which is not surprising given that the word ‘God’ occurs therein more than 3000 times. What may come as a surprise at first glance, however, is that despite the numerous mentions of the word ‘God’, the Quran does not employ any rigorous philosophical arguments to prove God’s existence. Indeed, it may be argued that the Quran does not attempt to prove the existence of God at all. Rather, in keeping with the mission of the prophets who preceded Muhammad, the Quran sets out to ‘prove’ not that there is a God, but that the God which exists – and to whose existence everyone ultimately attests, according to the Quran – is one. The Quran, it would appear, sees no need to prove the existence of God, not least because it presupposes that all humans are believers in an originator of being itself, regardless of how that originator is described.1 The central message of the Quran is thus not that God exists but that God is single and unique, and that everything that is ‘otherthan-God’ depends on Him for its being. It is for this reason that the first fundamental of the Muslim faith is ‘Divine unity’ and not ‘Divine existence’. However, in demonstrating Divine unity, the Quran also paints a vivid picture of the Creator so that man may augment

9

The Qur’an Revealed  his conceptual knowledge of God’s oneness with a more immediate awareness of God’s ‘character’, or the ‘names’ and ‘attributes’ by which He makes Himself known in the creation. For logic would seem to dictate that it is only through uncovering the truths and realities concerning God that man may come to know, worship and love Him, and in doing so fulfil the requirements of his role, ordained by the Quran, as Divine ‘vicegerent’ on earth. Thus while it is true to say that the central objective of the Quran is to establish the truth of Divine unity, this is clearly not its only concern. In establishing the oneness of God, the Quran also paints a portrait of the Divine in terms that it believes are accessible to the human intellect. And what is true of the Quran is true, mutatis mutandis, of the Risale-i Nur, which Said Nursi always claimed was a mirror held up to the Quran, not just in terms of its content matter but also with regard to its epistemic presuppositions and practical methods of argumentation. Although it is not a work of systematic exegesis in the classical sense of the term, the Risale is a detailed exposition of the major themes of the Quran in general, and its central theme - tawh.  īd – in particular. The overriding imperative of the Risale, then, is to establish not so much the existence of God as His oneness, and in this sense it can be said to follow closely and with great attention the contours of Quranic discourse on the Divine. Moreover, in keeping with the aims of the book that it mirrors, the Risale seeks not only to ‘prove’ the reality of Divine unity, but to paint a portrait of God that is not only accessible to modern readers but also that provides a solution for what Nursi argues is possibly the most grievous condition facing man, namely the weakening or the complete loss of religious belief.2

On Nursian ‘proofs’

Before we explore in greater depth Nursi’s exposition of Divine Unity, it would be useful here to say a little about the basis upon which he builds his arguments or, as he routinely calls them, his ‘proofs’. Whether he is making claims about the unity of God, the veracity of Muhammad’s prophethood or the existence of the hereafter, Nursi’s reasoning usually takes the form of a series of closely interconnected arguments – cosmological, teleological and so forth – which are intended to persuade the reader not only that the claim in question is reasonable but also that it is virtually inevitable. Nursi’s repeated use of phrases such as ‘is it at all possible…’ and ‘surely one must conclude that…’ in rhetorical questions to those who would doubt the truth of his claims is evidence of the tone of self-assuredness and irrefragability that he wishes to put across in his argumentation. The criticism that one may level at Nursi in his use of the word ‘proofs’ is, of course, that his ‘proofs’ are not really proofs at all, at least not in the philosophically or scientifically accepted senses of the term. Although the arguments he uses are presented as failsafe support for the claims he is making, whether it be the unity of God, the inevitability of resurrection or the inefficacy of material causes, the fact remains that if we examine the actual reasoning that Nursi employs, it is possible, as W. Mark Richardson points out, to reach the same conclusion with regard to Nursi as the Catholic theologian David Burrell reached after examining the cosmological arguments of Thomas Aquinas.3 For Burrell, Aquinas’s arguments are not so much proofs in the generally accepted sense of the term as the results of the reasoning of the believing mind in response to the prompting of revelation.

10

  On Divine Unity In other words, it may be argued that in looking at the creation and tracing its existence back to a Creator, Nursi is working not with a blank slate but with a substrate of faith – īmān – which, as Richardson points out, leads to a particular reading or interpretation of creation. If this be the case, Nursi’s arguments, then, should be seen not so much as irrefutable proofs as the ‘reasonable steps of a believer’ which, employing perfectly rational arguments, are taken to strengthen or consolidate belief ‘once the interpretative framework is grounded in belief in God.’ 4 While the notion that Nursi’s starting point is not the creation uninterpreted but, rather, a faith which leads to a particular reading and interpretation of creation, may be difficult at first for his devout readers to assimilate, it is in fact a notion that one finds in the Quran, which presents itself as a ‘Book for those who believe in the unseen’. Quranic ‘proofs’, then, such as they are, be they in regard to Divine Unity, prophethood or the hereafter, are presented to those who read it with the prior assumption that they have some kind of belief in a creator, however inchoate that belief may be. The same, one may argue, may be said of the works of Said Nursi. Given this, Nursi’s use of the term ‘proofs’ should perhaps be understood as his way of giving the arguments he uses that extra bit of rhetorical weight in order to drive home in the reader’s mind what for Nursi, at least, is the irrefutable truth.

On the notion of ‘necessary existence’

As far as his exposition of the Divine is concerned, Nursi’s prime objective throughout the Risale is, as mentioned in the introductory section of this chapter, to provide evidence of the existence in unity of God by highlighting the tension which exists between the innate impotence of created beings and the attributes of perfection which, their existential poverty notwithstanding, they appear to display. Accordingly the thrust of Nursi’s discourse is strictly mystico-theological, and so a search of the Risale-i Nur for the kind of arguments used by Muslim philosophers to furnish evidence of the existence of God would yield very little in terms of abstract metaphysical speculation. While Nursi makes use of certain cosmological and teleological arguments, he neither introduces them as such nor articulates them with the same technical rigour and philosophical nuances as one might expect from a Farabi or an Ibn Sina. One notable exception, however, is Nursi’s exposition of ‘necessary existence’ (wujūb al-wujūd) and his attempt to furnish evidence for the existence of one who is, by default, ‘necessarily existent’ (wājib al-wujūd ). Nursi leaves his readers in no doubt that his aim is to demonstrate that God exists necessarily, albeit using methods which he believes are quite unlike those employed by other theologians. Most people would accept readily that the things which comprise the phenomenal world are all contingent, for each of them might have been other than how it is, or indeed might not have existed at all. Indeed, the cosmological argument is often referred to as the ‘argument from contingency’. But is it possible that God might not have existed? Traditionally, Muslim theologians and philosophers have been of one mind in claiming that God’s existence is in a very real sense necessary, the qualitative difference of their respective arguments notwithstanding. One of the earliest and most famous expositions of ‘necessary existence’ in Muslim intellectual history is that of Ibn Sīnā (980-1037); while numerous

11

The Qur’an Revealed  variations on his argument have been formulated, his original thesis is still considered definitive by many scholars of classical Muslim thought.5 In brief, his thesis is as follows: Every existing thing, if looked at in and of itself (min hayth dhātihi), not regarding anything else, is either such that existence is necessary for it in itself (f ī nafsihi) or it is not. If its existence is necessary then it is God (al-H .  aqq) in Himself, the Necessarily Existent in Itself, namely the ‘Self-Subsisting One’ (al-Qayyūm). If a thing is not necessary, then it cannot be said that it is impossible in itself after it has been presupposed to exist. Rather, if a condition were attached in respect of its essence, such as the condition of the absence of its cause, then it would become impossible; or if a condition were attached in respect of its essence such as the condition of the existence of its cause, it would become necessary. But if a condition is not attached to it – neither the occurrence of a cause nor its absence – then a third state is left over to it with respect to its essence, namely contingency (imkān). And it is, in respect of its essence, a thing which is neither necessary nor impossible. Thus every existent thing is either necessarily existent in itself or contingently existent in itself.6

The crux of Ibn Sīnā’s argument is that a contingent being can never be self-sufficient: with respect to existence, there is nothing within it which, essentially, tips the balance and gives precedence to its existence over its non-existence. It may be seen as ‘necessary’ once it comes into being, but only by virtue of the fact that its existence has been given precedence over its non-existence by a cause external to itself. Given that the complex of contingent beings known as the cosmos is contingent, then the argument is that, in order to avoid an infinite regress, there must be a being which exists necessarily, in and of itself, and upon which all contingent beings depend for their existence. And that ‘necessary Being’ is God. Thus runs the argument of the classical Muslim philosophers. Nursi’s approach is somewhat different. In order to demonstrate the necessity of Divine existence, Nursi first tries to establish the innate existential poverty of created beings and their concomitant need for God for their coming into being and their continued existence. While he does give a brief account of the nature of contingency in the abstract, as it were, his arguments are based for the most part on his appraisal of the phenomenal world as one that is characterised by its utter dependence on the ground of all Being, i.e. God, for all that it is and all that it has. The nearest thing to a dedicated discussion on necessary existence in the Risale is the Thirty-Third Word, which is the source for the passages below in which Nursi infers Divine necessity from the existential poverty of created beings. If we look, we see that all things and especially living creatures have numerous different needs and numerous different wants. And those wants and needs are provided for them at the appropriate time, in unexpected ways, from places they do not know and their hands cannot reach; succour comes to them. But the power of these needy beings is insufficient for even the smallest of those endless things they wish for; they cannot meet their needs. Consider yourself: of how many things are you in need that your hands cannot reach, like your external and inner senses and their needs? Compare all other living creatures with yourself. See, just as singly they testify to the Necessary Existence and point to His unity, so in their totality they show to man’s reason a Necessarily Existent One behind the veil of the Unseen, a Single One of Unity, among titles of Most Generous, All-Compassionate,

12

  On Divine Unity Nurturer and Disposer. O ignorant unbeliever and dissolute heedless one! With what can you explain this wise, percipient, compassionate activity? Deaf nature? Blind force? Senseless chance? Can you explain it through impotent, lifeless causes? 7

The innate inability of beings to know precisely what their bodies need as sustenance and how that sustenance is to be deployed serves for Nursi as evidence that there must of necessity exist One who is able to give them what they need in a wise and compassionate manner. Otherwise, one would have to attribute the provision of sustenance to other contingent beings, which is precluded by the fact that they too are characterised by their own existential poverty. Moreover, having established to his own satisfaction that there must of necessity be a provider that is not contingent, he is able then to show that this provider is single and unique. For if that provider were one of several or many providers, it too would be limited, contingent and, ultimately, in need of a provider itself. The Divine name al-S.  amad is also invoked by Nursi in his discourse on necessity. God’s s.amadiyya, which is translated here as ‘eternal besoughtedness’, denotes the eternal self-sufficiency of the Divine together with the dependence of all created beings on Him for their entry into the phenomenal world and the continuation of their existence. There are in the concept of s.amadiyya connotations of necessity, as Nursi shows when he talks about the innumerable possible ways in which a being might take form before it is created, and the singularity and uniqueness that is ‘stamped’ on it once it appears. While in their existence and individuality (tashakhkhus.āt), things are in a hesitant (mutaraddid ), bewildered (mutah.  ayyir), and shapeless form among innumerable possible ways, they are suddenly given a most well-ordered and wise aspect of individuality. For example, every human being has on his face characteristics which differentiate him from all his fellow humans, and it is equipped with utter wisdom with external and inner senses. This proves that the face is a most brilliant stamp of Divine oneness. And just as each face testifies to the existence of an All-Wise Maker and points to His existence, so too the stamp which all faces display in their totality shows to the mind’s eye that all things are a seal peculiar to their Creator. O denier! To what workshop can you refer these stamps which can in no way be imitated, and the stamp of Eternal Besoughtedness which is on the totality? 8

The fact that beings are ‘hesitant’ and ‘bewildered’ is arguably the same as saying that there is nothing in their essence which dictates that their future form be like this or like that, let alone whether they exist at all. For Nursi, ‘hesitation’ and ‘bewilderment’ prove that the giving of both existence and forms is dependent on One who exists necessarily, and Who, being al-S.  amad, is eternal, totally self-sufficient and thus susceptible neither to creation, destruction or mutability.

Logical versus factual/ontological necessity

It has been suggested by some modern scholars that it is perhaps best to avoid speaking of God as a necessary being at all, lest the necessity in question be misconstrued as logical rather than factual and/or ontological.9 Although the renowned Christian theologian John

13

The Qur’an Revealed  Hick does not suggest that the notion of necessity be jettisoned, he does call for a more nuanced understanding of the terminology it employs. According to Hick, it is imperative to distinguish between two fundamentally different and irreconcilable notions of necessary existence. The first is that notion of God as a being whose existence is a matter of logical necessity, as when it is said that the proposition ‘God exists’ is a logical, analytical or a priori truth and that it is logically impossible that God should not exist.10 To claim that God’s existence is a logically necessary truth is to claim that God exists in every possible world, and therefore that it is inconceivable that there could have been nothing instead of something. However, there is no basis for making such an assertion since it is perfectly reasonable to posit the existence of a completely empty world, or to posit that nothing at all exist, including God.11 But if God exists in every possible world, then it seems that His existence does not explain the world’s contingency, for a necessary truth does nothing to explain anything that could have been otherwise.12 For this reason, among others, it has been suggested that the notion of logical necessity be avoided. The second notion of necessary existence, which Hick supports, is that of factual or ontological necessity. In short, to say that God is factually necessary is to say that God exists, without beginning or end, and without origin, cause or ground of any kind. Hick sums up his position by asserting that “…the concept of God as eternal, and as not dependent upon any other reality, but on the contrary as the creator of everything other than himself – which is compendiously expressed by the term (factually) ‘necessary being’ – is a concept concerning which the factual question can properly be raised: Is there a being or a reality to which this concept applies?”13 It would appear from the passages in the Thirty-Third Word that when Nursi speaks of God as existing necessarily, he has in mind not logically or conceptually necessary existence, but rather God’s not being susceptible to creation, destruction or change that is initiated from without. In other words, Nursi’s conception of the ‘necessarily existing’ God is a conception of a God Who exists independently, immutably and eternally, and upon Whom all created beings depend for their existence. In this, Nursi is at one with most of his fellow theologians, whose discussions of necessary existence are usually referring to necessity in the factual rather than the logical sense. As is also apparent from these passages, Nursi’s discourse on ‘necessity’ does not come from the traditional Muslim theological mould either, for it is not part of a systematic and rigorously methodological attempt to ‘prove’ the existence of God and is certainly not foundational – at least in the sequential sense – to his overall approach. Explanations of ‘necessity’ and justifications as to why God is deemed to exist necessarily appear almost randomly throughout the Risale rather than at the very outset, where one would expect it to appear were it a straightforward work of systematic theology that had been written in a logical sequence and predicated on a set of basic philosophical arguments for the existence of God. What emerges from Nursi’s particular take on necessity, however, is the fully-fledged God of the Quran with most, if not all, of His attributes of perfection. From this perspective alone he distinguishes himself from mainstream theologians, whose methods he considers to be inadequate. It appears that the argument from contingency, when conducted solely in the abstract, will for Nursi always be less than fulfilling:

14

  On Divine Unity Now let us come to the discussion of ‘contingency’. The scholars of theology said: “Contingency is equal in regard to both existence and non-existence.” That is, if existence and non-existence are both equally possible, one who will specify, prefer and create is necessary. For contingent beings cannot create one another in uninterrupted and neverending chains of cause and effect. Neither can one create another, and that one the next, in the form of causation. In which case there is a Necessarily Existent One Who creates them. They rendered null and void the never-ending causal sequences with the famous twelve categorical proofs called ‘the ladder argument,’ and demonstrated causality to be impossible. They cut the chains of causes and proved the existence of the Necessarily Existent One. And we say this: it is more certain and easier to demonstrate a stamp peculiar to the Creator of All Things on everything than causes being cut at the extremities of the world with the proofs refuting causality. Through the effulgence of the Quran, all the Windows and all the Words are based on this principle. Nevertheless, the point of contingency possesses an infinite breadth. It demonstrates the existence of the Necessarily Existent One in innumerable respects. It is not restricted to the way of the scholars of theology - cutting the chains of causes, which in truth is a mighty and broad highway; it opens a path to knowledge of the Necessarily Existent One by ways beyond count.14

Nursi is not dismissing the theoretical usefulness of the argument from contingency as presented by the theologians; nor does he take them to task over the issue of logical versus factual necessity. Here, Nursi is merely saying that to restrict the demonstration of necessity to the refutation of secondary causality alone – which is what the argument from contingency in fact boils down to – is to do the subject an injustice. His criticism of the theologians stems therefore not from the fact that they use the argument from contingency, but from the fact that they use it in a limited and highly abstract way. In short, the theologians go so far and no further, establishing the existence of a ‘necessary Being’ but without putting any flesh on its bones, so to speak. To argue for the existence of a ‘necessarily existent’ Being as the theologians argue will, if successful, establish exactly that and no more: it establishes the existence of a Being whose non-existence cannot be posited. It does not, however, tell us anything about that Being’s attributes or nature, and it is possibly this which causes Nursi a certain amount of disquiet. As he himself says, the pathway to understanding necessity from contingency is much broader than the ones which the theologians tread. For we see that in its existence, its attributes and its lifetime, while hesitant among innumerable possibilities, that is, among truly numerous ways and aspects, each thing follows a well-ordered way in regard to its being in innumerable respects. Its attributes also are given to it in a particular way. All the attributes and states which it changes throughout its life are specified in the same fashion. This means it is impelled on a wise way amid innumerable ways through the will of one who specifies, the choice of one who chooses, and the creation of a wise creator. He clothes it with well-ordered attributes and states. Then it is taken out of isolation and made part of a compound body, and the possibilities increase, for they may be found in that body in thousands of ways. Whereas among those fruitless possibilities, it is given a particular, fruitful state, whereby important results and benefits are obtained from that body, and it is made to carry out important

15

The Qur’an Revealed  functions. Then the body is made a component of another body. Again the possibilities increase, for it could exist in thousands of ways. Thus it is given one state among those thousands of ways. And through that state it is made to perform important functions, and so on.15

At each stage of its life-journey, Nursi says, a particle is faced with innumerable possibilities, only one of which is specified for it. Given the innate poverty and contingency of the particle, the fact that it treads one path rather than another demonstrates the necessary existence of one who wills, specifies and creates with wisdom. At the next stage of its journey – when it becomes part of a compound body, for example – its future possibilities are multiplied, for there are innumerable ways in which it may be used within that body. The fact that it is given a particular function rather than another serves to highlight not only the contingency of the particle itself but also its need for, and dependence upon, one who will specify, will and create that function for it. And so it progressively demonstrates more certainly the necessary existence of an All-Wise Planner. It makes known that it is being impelled by the command of an All-Knowing Commander. In just the same way, each of the creatures in the universe testifies to the Necessarily Existent One through the particular being, the wise form and the beneficial attributes given it among numerous possibilities. So too when they enter compounds, those creatures proclaim their Maker with a different tongue in each compound. Step by step till the greatest compound, through their relations, functions and duties, they testify to the necessary existence, choice and will of their All-Wise Maker. Because the one who situates a thing in all the compounds while preserving its wise relations must be the Creator of all the compounds. That is to say, it is as though one single thing testifies to Him with thousands of tongues. Thus from the point of view of contingency, the testimony to the existence of the Necessarily Existent One is as numerous, not as the number of beings in the universe, but as the number of attributes of beings and the compounds they form.16

The ‘otherness’ of the Divine essence

A concomitant of the reasoning which concludes with the establishment of the existence of the ‘necessary Being’ is that this Being should be distinguished by its absolute and uncompromising alterity: as an independent Being whose existence is necessitated by itself and by no other thing, by definition It can be in no way like anything else that is other than It. Indeed, Nursi argues, were the ‘necessary Being’ of the same kind (jins) and essence (māhiyya) as the contingent beings which are dependent on it, nothing could ever come into existence. Most certainly, the universe’s Maker is not of the same kind as the universe. His Essence (māhiyya) resembles no other essence at all. Since this is so, the obstacles and restraints within the sphere of the universe cannot hinder Him; they cannot restrict His actions. He has complete disposal over the universe and is able to transform all of it at the same time. If the disposal and actions that are apparent in the universe were to be attributed to [the universe], it would cause so many difficulties and such confusion that neither would

16

  On Divine Unity any order remain nor would anything continue to exist; indeed, nothing would ever come into existence. For example, if the masterly art in vaulted domes is attributed to the stones of the domes, and if the command of a battalion, which properly belongs to its officer, is left to the soldiers, either neither of them would ever come into existence, or with great difficulty and confusion they would achieve a state completely lacking in order. Whereas, if in order for the situation of the stones in the dome to be achieved it is accorded to a master who is not a stone himself, and if the command of the soldiers in the regiment is referred to an officer who possesses the essential quality of officership, both the art is easy and the command and organization are easy. This is because while the stones and the soldiers are obstacles to each other, the master and the officer can look from every angle; they command without obstacle.17

Nursi’s aim here is to rule out the possibility that a contingent being, which on account of its contingency is characterised by its innate existential impotence and is subject to the creative command of the ‘necessary Being’, could play any creative role whatsoever, be it in the creation of itself or of any structure of which it is part. For Nursi, the notion that the stones in a vaulted dome should have come together of their own accord to form that dome is untenable; for him, the only way that they could come together and be positioned in harmony in order to produce such a structure is if they are functioning in accordance with the commands and directives of the necessary Being. For that necessary Being is, by dint of its existing necessarily, the only Being who is able to comprehend and have power over the whole, as well as over each of its constituent parts. Were the stones which support each other in a free-standing dome not acting under orders, each stone would become both subjugator and subjugated at the same time. For to presuppose autonomy is to presuppose will, and if the stones possessed autonomy, each one would have to force others into position while simultaneously forfeiting its own autonomy by taking up a predetermined position itself. Moreover, each of the stones would need to possess a comprehensive knowledge of the whole structure to whose existence it was contributing. Since a stone in a dome cannot be subjugated and possessed of autonomy at the same time, Nursi dismisses the idea that a whole can be created by its own parts. Like cannot create like, he avers, particularly when they are both dependent for their existence on something other than themselves; the only way that contingent beings can exist is if they are brought into being by One who exists necessarily and is therefore totally unlike them. Thus, in accordance with And God’s is the highest similitude,18 the sacred Essence (māhiyyat-i qudsī) of the Necessarily Existent One is not of the same kind as the essences of contingent beings(mumkināt). All the truths of the universe are rays from the name of Truth, which is one of the Beautiful Names of His Essence. Since His sacred Essence is Necessarily Existent and completely detached from materiality and different from all other essences, it has no like, no equivalent, no equal. So, most certainly, the administration and sustaining of the universe is as easy for that All-Glorious One’s pre-eternal power as that of the spring or, indeed, of a tree; and the creation of the resurrection of the dead, the realm of the hereafter, and Heaven and Hell, is as easy as the resurrection in spring of a tree which had died the previous autumn.19

17

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi uses māhiyya (lit. ‘whatness’ or ‘quiddity’) here to indicate the Divine essence, although the more common term is dhāt. The latter, which is the feminine form of the Arabic particle dhū, is a technical term from the Sufi lexicon used as a correlative of the Greek ousia and the Latin substantia and essentia.20 The dhāt of a thing refers to the nature of that thing as it is in itself, as opposed to a quality (s.ifa) it possesses. The Divine essence – whether translated as māhiyya or dhāt – signifies the ‘Necessarily Existent Being’ as He is in and of Himself, without any reference to the relationships which may or may not exist between that Being and the contingent creatures which constitute the phenomenal world. The Divine ‘essence’ is thus completely unknowable and the ascription of positive attributes to it is precluded. Thus in Muslim theology, as in theologies of other monotheistic religions, the Necessary Being is, with regard to His essence, described apophatically. Apophatic theology is one which attempts to describe God in negative terms, by using negatory attributes (al-s.ifāt al-salbiyya). In other words, He is described in terms of what He is not rather than in terms of what He is. The use of the salbī or negatory attributes is basically a way of trying to describe what is ultimately indescribable. Also known as the via negativa or ‘negative way’, this particular mode of theological reasoning has as its primary intention the negation of any attribute with regard to God that may leave Him susceptible to accusations of imperfection or deficiency. By dint of His being a ‘necessarily existent’ (wājib al-wujūd) being, God is completely selfsufficent (ghanī) and is in Himself absolute perfection: O ye men! It is ye that have need of Allah: but Allah is the One Free of all wants, worthy of all praise.21

The fact that God is ghanī means that he is necessarily free from the ascription to His essence of any attributes that connote imperfection and dependency. Thus it is argued, for example, that God does not have a corporeal entity and is free (mujarrad) from all matter. He is simple (basīt. ), i.e. non-compound, and thus indivisible, and he is neither the locus for any other being nor incarnate in any other being. He is inaccessible to the physical senses: He cannot be seen because, unlike the beings which are dependent upon Him, He is not in a particular place. As well as transcending space, He also transcends time: indeed, time is an abstraction which is understood from the motions and behaviours of the contingent beings for whose existence He is responsible. Consequently, not only is He atemporal, He is also immutable. In Muslim theology, the expression of God’s incomparability, which is what the negatory attributes covered here indicate, goes by the technical term tanzīh, which means literally to declare that something is pure and free of anything that might impugn that purity. With regard to God, it is to assert that He is free from all lack, want, defect or deficiency – traits which are found in contingent beings but not in one whose existence is necessary and upon whose Being all other creatures depend for their existence. The most direct and succinct expression of Divine incomparability appears in the verse There is nothing like Him.22 Theologically, the notion of tanzīh stands balanced against that of tashbīh, with which it forms a concept-pair. While tanzīh is the declaration of God’s utter incomparability, tashbīh is, paradoxical though it may seem at first glance, the affirmation of His similarity to that which is other than Him.

18

  On Divine Unity The concept of tashbīh is dealt with later on and thus need not concern us here. Having looked at some of the negatory attributes which indicate God’s otherness and incomparability, let us now see how Nursi uses a number of them in his exposition of Divine unity.

Non-corporeality

Quranic references to the ‘hands’ and the ‘face’ of God notwithstanding, the complete ‘otherness’ of the Divine means that He cannot be thought of as having any kind of corporeality. The All-Glorious Maker is not physical or corporeal: time and space cannot restrict Him; creation and place cannot obtrude on His presence and witnessing; means and mass cannot veil His actions. There is no fragmentation or division in His regarding and acting towards creation. One thing cannot be an obstacle to another. He performs innumerable acts as though they were a single act. For this reason, in the same way that, as far as its meaning is concerned, a huge tree can be encapsulated in a seed, a world also can be contained within a single individual, and the whole world can be encompassed by the Hand of Power. 23

The fact that the Creator is not burdened by physicality or bound by the restraints of time and space allows Him to encompass each thing individually and all things at once with the utmost facility, Nursi says, and means that He is able to carry out countless acts of creation simultaneously with the same ease with which He carries out a single act. Given that Nursi dismisses the possibility of a corporeal God, it is clear that he also rejects the notion that the Quranic references to God’s ‘hand’ and ‘face’ are to be understood literally. Considering that in much of his theology one can see the impress of Ash‘arite thinking, one might expect that Nursi would, like Abū 24 al-H .  asan al-Ash‘arī himself, have equivocated somewhat on the subject. Early on in his career, al-Ash‘arī, while dismissing the gross anthropomorphism of groups such as the Mujassima, the H .  ashwiyya and the Mushabbiha, is said to have interpreted the apparently anthropomorphic verses in the Quran by stating that God is “a body unlike other bodies.” 25 In his later writings he modifies this somewhat by stating that God does indeed have hands and a face, but “without asking how” (bilā kayfa).26 Nursi, however, is unambiguous in his rejection of anthropomorphism with respect to God. If the essence of God is completely unlike the essence of contingent beings, then there would appear to be no room in the discussion for equivocations such as bilā kayfa, and it is thus clear that Nursi’s understanding of the Divine ‘hands’ and ‘face’ was a metaphorical one.

Immateriality

If Nursi is clear on the non-corporeality of God, He is equally clear on His immateriality: just as God cannot be described as having a body – even a ‘body unlike other bodies’, to quote al-Ash‘arī – He cannot be described in any terms that connote materiality of any

19

The Qur’an Revealed  kind. To be material is, by default, to be limited, and to be limited is to be contingent. And for Nursi, limitation and contingency are clearly not consonant with an absolute Creator. Nursi’s discussion of Divine immateriality is designed mainly to furnish his readers with evidence to support the notion of Divine omnipresence: it is by virtue of His immateriality that God is described as being in all places at once while in reality being in no place at all, and it is on the same account that His acts are described as comprehensive and allembracing. Nursi begins his discussion by pointing out that even material beings – depending on their degree of materiality – can attain a semblance of omnipresence. A single person may gain universality by means of various mirrors. While being a single individual, he becomes like a universal, possessing general qualities. For example, although the sun is a single individual, thanks to the existence of transparent objects it becomes so universal that it fills the face of the earth with its images and reflections. It even has as many manifestations as the number of droplets and shining motes. Although the sun’s heat, light and the seven colours in its light comprehend, encompass and embrace all things which confront them, all transparent things also hold in the metaphorical pupil of their eyes the sun’s heat, its light and its seven colours, together with its image. And they make a kind of throne for them in their hearts. That is to say, with regard to Unity, the sun is present together with many of its attributes in everything through a sort of manifestation of its essence.27

If certain created entities such as the sun, angels and spirit-beings are able, through the mystery of luminosity, to encompass and pervade many things simultaneously, Nursi argues, it is clear that a Being who is unencumbered by materiality will be able to encompass and pervade the whole of creation at all times. The Single and Most Pure and Holy Essence, Whose attributes are all-comprehending and Whose functions are universal, is far beyond and exalted above matter, and is utterly remote and free from any restriction and the darkness of density. All these lights and luminous beings are but obscure shadows of His Sacred Names; and all existence and life and the World of Spirits, the Intermediate Realm and the World of Similitudes are semitransparent mirrors reflecting His beauty. What being can be hidden in the face of His oneness, which is within the manifestation of His attributes and actions, which in turn are evident through His universal will, absolute power and all-embracing knowledge? What thing can be difficult for Him? What place can be concealed from Him? What object can remain distant from Him? What individual can draw close to Him without acquiring universality? Can anything at all be hidden from Him? Can any place at all be empty of His presence? 28

If certain created beings are able to encompass many things at once, Nursi argues, it is only because they are mirrors held up to the Divine names and attributes, among which are freedom (tajarrud) from materiality and omnipresence. However, he is quick to point out that while they are mirrors, they are only semi-transparent; they may be shadows of His names, but they are extremely obscure shadows, manifesting only partially the names which He possesses at the level of absoluteness. And Divine immateriality must, if God is

20

  On Divine Unity a ‘necessary Being’ distinguished from all other beings by the sheer alterity of His essence, be absolute, with no lack, defect or deficiency. It is for this reason, Nursi points out, that nothing can remain concealed or distant from Him, and no place can remain empty of His presence.

Indivisibility and non-locatability

The immaterial God of Muslim theology is not only invisible but also indivisible: His essence is non-compound and therefore He cannot be thought of as having parts. Moreover, as Nursi has already intimated, an omnipresent God is a God who is not locatable in one place alone. This does not mean, of course, that He is co-extensive with the cosmos; rather, it means that wherever one looks, there is His manifestation. Nursi uses the concepts of indivisibility and non-locatability to highlight the facility with which God’s dominical acts are carried out and also to dismiss the notion that material causes can play any actual collaborative role in the creation of things. His ultimate objective is, of course, to provide yet more evidence in support of Divine unity. The fact that indivisibility and not being bound by space result in the utmost facility has this meaning: since the All-Powerful Maker is free of the restrictions of space, He may be thought of as being present everywhere through His power. And since there is no division or fragmentation in regard to His Essence, He can regard and act towards all things with all of His names. And since He is present everywhere and acts towards everything, beings and intermediaries and mass cannot hinder and prevent His actions; indeed there is no necessity for them to do so. If we suppose there were some necessity, then things like electric wires, the branches of trees and veins in human beings would resemble means of facilitation, of the arrival of life and of swiftness in actions. So, let us ignore the idea of hindering, restricting, preventing and intervening, and say that they are means of facilitating, expediting and uniting. That is to say, from the point of view of the obedience and submission of all things to the domination of the All-Powerful and Glorious One’s power, there is no need for them. If there were some need for them, it would be as a means of facilitating.29

The fact that God is from one perspective in no place yet from another in all places at all times precludes the interference in the creative process of other beings, Nursi concludes. Nursi’s rejection of causation is explored at great length in Chapter Three and should not delay us here. Suffice to say that Nursi considers material causes to be apparent only: they are a veil which covers God’s dominical working and simply the conduits through which His names and acts are made manifest. God is nowhere yet present everywhere, Nursi contends, and thus in reality He has no need for causes and intermediaries, except as “means of facilitating”. If there is a need for causes and intermediaries, the need is man’s alone, for without the existence of a ‘veil’ between the created and the Creator, the Creator would in fact be imperceptible; it is only through the ‘filter’ of contingency, materiality and finitude that the existence of a necessary, immaterial and absolute God can be discerned. That which is facilitated by causes is man’s perception of God, and so if causes are necessary at all, they are necessary because of the limitations of man, not of God.

21

The Qur’an Revealed 

God as the source of all perfections

While at the level of His essence (dhāt) God cannot be known or even described satisfactorily, except in negative terms, at the level of His Divinity, where relationships obtain between Him and the creation, it is possible to use positive as well as negative attributes to reach what is in fact no more than a semblance of a description of the Divine nature.30 At the level of His Divinity, God’s relationship with the creation is mediated by His ‘beautiful names’ (al-asmā al-h.  usnā), which are countless in number and which form the pillars upon which the phenomenal world rests. The Necessarily Existent One possesses infinite beauty and perfection, for all the varieties of them dispersed through the universe are the signs and indications of His beauty and perfection. Those who possess beauty and perfection clearly love them. Similarly, the All-Glorious One greatly loves His beauty, and He loves it in a way that befits Himself. Furthermore He loves His names, which are the rays of His beauty, and since He loves them, He surely loves His art, which displays their beauty. In which case, He also loves His creatures, which are mirrors reflecting His beauty and perfection. Since He loves the creatures that display them, He certainly loves the creatures’ fine qualities, which point to the beauty and perfection of His names.31

It is appropriate here to revisit the theological concept-pair of tanzīh and tashbīh.  . As was outlined earlier, tanzīh is the declaration of Divine incomparability and a confirmation of the reality that His essence is utterly unlike anything created or, indeed, anything imaginable. But as Nursi intimates, an incomparable, unknowable God cannot be understood, let alone loved and worshipped, and it is here that the notion of tashbīh becomes relevant. For tashbīh is the affirmation that God is similar (shabīh) to His creation. This similarity pertains, of course, to all attributes other than the negatory ones which are part of the apophatic theology mentioned earlier in the chapter. But while the word ‘similarity’ is used quite freely by scholars to describe the relationship that God has with his creatures through the dominical acts of creation, it must always be borne in mind that it is not the kind of similarity that obtains between beings of the same genus. That is why tashbīh must always be tempered by the acknowledgment of tanzīh, thus allowing God to be understood in what are basically human terms while at the same time declaring Him free of all truly human attributes. The concept of tashbīh has parallels with the via analogia of Thomas Aquinas, who was also at pains to point out that a God known only by means of the via negativa is not a God that one can relate to. His solution to the dilemma was to suggest that from our own relationship to our attributes it is possible to infer God’s relationship to His attributes. This does not constitute a direct knowledge claim about God because we do not know God’s love: all we know is something to which Divine love is analogous, namely our love. God’s attributes still transcend those of man, but through their analogousness they become more tangible and, as a result, man achieves proximity to a God Whose ultimate transcendence threatens to render him ever remote and inaccessible.32 For Nursi, the cosmos, as he later points out, is a vast showcase of ‘signs’, each one of which points to one or more of God’s attributes of perfection, such as wisdom, beauty, life, power, provision, generosity, will and knowledge. These attributes clearly have their source in

22

  On Divine Unity God, but they can also be witnessed in created phenomena, and in humankind in particular. A God who had no similarity to His creatures would be an unknowable, inaccessible God – the God describable solely in terms of the negatory attributes of apophatic theology. But it is arguable that even those negatory terms would not be understandable were it not for God’s similarity to His creatures. For without some kind of similarity, how would they be able to discern and appreciate His perfections? Without the concept of wisdom, which man sees at work both in himself and in the cosmos of which he is part, he could have no idea that God is wise, even if Divine revelation told him that it was so. There must, therefore, be something of the Divine that is shared by man in order for man to be able to know and commune with Him. Naturally, the notion of ‘shared’ attributes will to the traditional mindset appear to be a startling and possibly dangerous one, not least because the uncompromising monotheism of Islam, together with the utter incomparability of God, precludes the notion that anything that is God’s can be shared with anything that is other than Him. However, when Nursi talks in terms of God’s similarity to the creation, he is always at pains to point out that if man possesses wisdom, beauty, knowledge, power and all of the other attributes of perfection, he possesses them only as manifestations or reflections. While Divine knowledge, for example, is absolute, human knowledge is limited and contingent. From a Nursian perspective, human knowledge is but an attenuated simulacrum of Divine knowledge: an obscure shadow, to use his term, of the real thing. The same applies to all of the attributes of perfection which are manifest in creation. In their reflected form, they are the attributes of God, but at the same time they are nothing like Him, just as the reflection in a mirror is nothing but the thing reflected, yet at the same time existentially nothing like it whatsoever. The reflection in the mirror has a dependent existence, much like the shadow of a human hand on a wall. Similarly, the attributes of perfection that are scattered throughout the cosmos, and by means of which one is able to discern the true Owner of those attributes, have a dependent existence only. Thus God’s attributes are ‘shared’ with those of man in a figurative sense only.

The cosmos as a gallery of Divine attributes

For Nursi, the cosmos is permeated by attributes of perfection: everywhere one sees signs of goodness, beauty, wisdom and countless other qualities which, on account of the existential poverty of the phenomenal world, cannot be attributed to contingent beings themselves. The perfections we see in the cosmos, Nursi says, are all signs and indications of the perfections which exist at the degree of absoluteness in the Creator. In short, all of the goodness, perfection and beauty discernible in the universe is but “a pale shadow in relation to His true perfection.” Nursi then uses the allegory of the ornately adorned palace to provide what he believes is evidence for his claim: A perfect and splendidly adorned and decorated palace plainly points to perfect skill and craftsmanship. And that craftsmanship and art, which is a perfect act, plainly points to a perfect author, master and craftsman together with his titles and names like Fashioner and Adorner. And those perfect names doubtlessly point to the master’s perfect and skilful attributes. And that perfect skill and those attributes self-evidently point to his perfect

23

The Qur’an Revealed  ability and faculty. And that perfect ability and faculty necessarily point to the perfection of his essence and the exaltedness of his nature. In exactly the same way, this palace of the universe, this perfect and adorned work of art, self-evidently points to actions of the utmost perfection. For perfections in works of art result from, and demonstrate, perfection of action. And perfection of actions point to a Perfect Author and the perfect Names of that Author. That is, in relation to the works of art, they point to the perfection of Names like Planner, Fashioner, All-Wise, All-Compassionate and Adorner.33

The existence of perfections in the cosmos is held by Nursi to be axiomatic, even though that which man experiences as a value – goodness, justice, beauty, wisdom, knowledge – and understands to be a perfection is manifested in the cosmos in a far from perfect manner. However beautiful a piece of art may be, it can never be beautiful in the absolute sense of the word; however just a judge is, by dint of his limitations as a human being he can never be absolutely just; regardless of how knowledgeable a scholar one is, he can never know everything, and so on. Nevertheless, there is nothing to suggest that such values cannot exist absolutely, as the attributes of one who comprises all values to the degree of perfection. Nursi, like the medieval theologians before him, maximalises those attributes believed to be susceptible to perfection, such as beauty, wisdom, knowledge and the like, and ascribes them in their supreme and absolute form to God. To support this ascription, He argues from effect to cause, from world to Creator, from the manifestation or reflection of attributes of perfection to the Possessor of them at their absolute degree. The perfection of the [Divine] attributes self-evidently points to the perfection of His functioning essence, because it is from the functioning essence that the attributes proceed. And the perfection of essential functions points at the degree of ‘knowledge of certainty’ to the perfection of the functioning essence. They point to a perfection so worthy that although the light of the perfection passes through the veils of functions, attributes, Names, actions and works of art, it still demonstrates the goodness, beauty and perfection to be seen to this great extent in the universe. 34

The existence of attributes of potential perfection in the cosmos points to the existence of attributes of actual perfection in the Divine essence, for just as it is possible to imagine, as St Anselm did, a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, it is also possible to imagine an attribute than which nothing more perfect can be conceived.35 In God, Nursi says, all attributes exist at the level of absoluteness and unsurpassable perfection, and even though they are filtered down through the countless veils of creation and materiality until they are manifest in the phenomenal world as pale shadows of their original selves, they are still, as relative perfections, fully demonstrative of the ultimate reality and source of all perfections that is God.

The seven ‘sacred names’ of God

Having established that the cosmos is built on the pillars of the Divine names and attributes of perfection, which are numberless, Nursi then focuses on the seven ‘sacred names’ of God. The compartmentalisation of the Divine names into distinct conceptual categories occurred relatively early on in Muslim theological discourse. Opinions as to the number and

24

  On Divine Unity scope of these categories differ, and for the most part they amount to no more than rather arbitrarily designed heuristic devices, with no discernible Quranic basis and little in the way of compelling theological import. Nursi’s schema is uncontroversial in that it is clearly Ash‘arite in conception. However, his objective in discussing it appears to be not so much the clarification of some arcane theological doctrine for its own sake as the desire to show how such constructions can be used to support the concept of Divine unity, which is his overriding aim throughout the Risale-i Nur. Apart from the negatory (salbī) attributes of apophatic theology mentioned earlier, Nursi says that God has names which pertain to His essence (dhāt) and those which pertain to various sorts of Divine action, such as forgiving, providing, giving life, dealing death and so on.36 He elaborates upon this in his exegesis of the phrase In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the All-Compassionate, which is the opening verse of the Quran. The name ‘Allah’, he says, indicates attributes that are identical with His essence and which indicate His utter transcendence and freedom from defect (al-s.ifāt al-‘ayniyya wa al-tanzīhiyya), while the name ‘All-Compassionate’ (al-Rah.  īm) points to those attributes which are other than His essence and which are linked to His creative activity (al-s.ifāt al-ghayriyya al-fi‘liyya). As for the name ‘All-Merciful’ (al-Rah. mān), Nursi says that this indicates the attributes which are neither identical to, nor other than, the Divine essence (la ‘ayn wa la ghayr). These are seven in number, Nursi writes, and their significance inheres in the fact that they are the source of all of the Divine names and, by extension, all created phenomena. There appears visible to our eye a comprehensive, permanent, orderly and awesome truth - one that changes, transforms and renews all beings in heaven and on earth with imperious and incessant activity. Within the truth of that unquestionably wise activity, there can be perceived immediately the truth of the manifestation of dominicality, and in turn, within the truth of that irrefragably merciful manifestation of dominicality, one is able to recognize the truth of the epiphany of Divinity. From this continuous, wise and imperious activity, the deeds of an All-Powerful and All-Knowing Doer can be discerned, as if from behind a veil. And from behind the veil of these nurturing and administering deeds of dominicality, the Divine Names, manifest in all things, can be immediately perceived. 37

Arguing from the orderly activity which he says is ubiquitous in the cosmos, Nursi arrives at the “truth of the manifestation of dominicality” (haqīqat-i taz. āhur-i rubūbiyya), and from there concludes that in all of this there is a clear indication of the Divinity (ulūhiyya) at work behind the scenes, as it were. From all of this activity, he says, the deeds of an all-powerful and all-knowing Maker can be discerned, as though from behind a veil. And from behind that veil – the veil of apparent causality – the whole panoply of Divine names, which are manifested in all things, can also be detected. And behind the countless Divine names, which, Nursi says, also constitute a veil, one is able to deduce the existence of seven ‘sacred’ attributes, which are key not only to the rest of the names but also to the existence of the phenomenal world itself. The existence of the seven ‘sacred’ attributes, Nursi contends, is required primarily by the name al-Rah. mān, which, he says, has the meaning of ‘Provider’ (al-Razzāq) and is concerned with the bestowal of continuance (baqā). Continuance, Nursi says, is the repetition

25

The Qur’an Revealed  of existence (takarrur-i wujūd ), and existence necessitates a distinguishing attribute (s.ifat-i mumayyiza), a specifying attribute (s.ifat-i mukhas.s.is.a) and an effectuating attribute (s.ifat-i mu’aththira): The distinguishing attribute is knowledge (‘ilm); the specifying attribute is will (irāda); and the effectuating attribute is power (qudra). Continuance, which is the result of the bestowal of existence, entails the certainty of sight (bas.ar), hearing (sam‘ ) and speech (kalām), for necessarily the Provider has sight in order to see the need of the recipient of providence if the recipient does not seek it; and He has hearing in order to hear the recipient’s words when he asks; and He has speech in order to speak through intermediaries, where there are some. And these six necessitate the seventh, which is life (h. ayāt).38

What Nursi is talking about here is the necessary conditions for the continuation of existence. For a created being to come into existence in the first place, and then to continue to exist, the agent responsible for the continuation of existence – in this case, God - needs to exhibit certain qualities or attributes. The first is knowledge, without which it will be impossible for that agent to distinguish one being from another, or one particular need from another; the second is will, without which the agent is unable to determine from among countless alternatives the specific provisions or requirements needed for the continuation of the being’s existence; and the third is power, without which the agent would not be able to effect any changes in the being whatsoever. Knowledge, will and power thus become linked inextricably in the process of bestowing continuance, and any agent that bestows continuance will of necessity possess all three attributes. From the existence of knowledge, will and power, Nursi argues, the attributes of sight, hearing and speech can be inferred. Sight, hearing and speech are connected to awareness and communication. It would be unthinkable, Nursi implies, for an agent possessed of knowledge, will and power not to be able to see or hear the objects of his solicitousness in order to gain awareness of their needs, whether they are spoken or unspoken. Similarly, it would unthinkable for an agent who possesses knowledge, will, power, sight and hearing not to be able to communicate with those for whom he is providing, be it through speech or through any other means. And it would clearly be unthinkable for an agent who possesses all six of these attributes not to possess the seventh, which is life itself. Each of the seven attributes confirms and supports the others, Nursi contends, and together they form an indivisible unity. Then behind the veil of the Beautiful Names, manifest with Glory and Beauty, can be deduced the existence and reality of the seven sacred attributes, according to the testimony of all creation, in a life-giving, powerful, knowledgeable, all-hearing, all-seeing, volitional and speech-endowed form. And there appears to the eye of faith in the heart, self-evidently, necessarily and with full certainty, the existence of a Necessary Existent that is described by these attributes, a Single One of Unity known by these Names, a Peerless and Eternal Doer, in a form more evidential and brilliant than the sun. For just as it is impossible for there to be a deed without a doer, or a name without one designated by the name, so too it is not possible for there to be an attribute without one qualified by the attribute, and for there to be a craft without a craftsman.39

26

  On Divine Unity The attribute of life (h. ayāt), which is nothing but existence itself, is singled out by Nursi for special consideration: Just as the all of the attributes of perfection point to the existence of the Possessor of Glory, they also indicate in most manifest fashion the existence and reality of life, and the livingness and permanence of that Essence. For knowing is a sign of life; hearing is an indication of life; seeing belongs only to the living; will takes place only with life; purposive power is found only in living beings; and speech is a task for those endowed with knowledge and life. It follows from the foregoing that the attribute of life has proofs seven times as numerous as the cosmos, and evidences that proclaim its existence and the existence of the One Whom it qualifies. Thus it comes to be the foundation and source of the attributes, the origin and support of the Supreme Name.40

All of the Divine names thus point to the seven ‘sacred names’, and each of the seven ‘sacred names’ points to and confirms the attribute of life. And life – the distinguishing characteristic par excellence of God’s essence – is for Nursi the very foundation stone of all of the Divine attributes, and the wellspring of Divine unity.

The ever-changing manifestations of the Divine

Not only does God have innumerable names and attributes, says Nursi, but these names and attributes manifest themselves, alone and in conjunction with each other, in countless degrees of intensity. And since there are countless degrees within each of the countless names, the ways in which God manifests Himself are of necessity without end. Consequently, the cosmos is like an ever-changing kaleidoscope made up of a potentially infinite number of manifestations of the Divine which are constantly in flux. That the Owner of absolute beauty should want this beauty displayed and appreciated is, for Nursi, a given, and explains the ceaseless creativity of the Divine. For it is well-known that everyone who possesses beauty wants to both see and display his beauty; that everyone who possesses some skills desires and loves to attract attention to his skills by exhibiting and proclaiming them; he desires and loves his skill, which is a beautiful truth and meaning that has remained concealed, to be revealed and to find ardent admirers. These fundamental rules are in force in all things according to the degree of each. According to the testimony of the universe and the evidence of the manifestations and embroideries of the thousand and one Most Beautiful Names of the All-Glorious Self-Subsistent One, Who possesses absolute beauty, there are in every degree of each of those Names a true loveliness, a true perfection, a true beauty and a most exquisite truth. Indeed, in every degree there are endless different sorts of loveliness and innumerable beautiful truths.41

The fact that the Divine names admit of countless degrees accounts not only for the continuous creativity of God but also the gradation of existence which allows for the existence of apparent opposites to be understood: degrees of light, for example, connote degrees of darkness too, and if that which is ‘other-than-God’ is to be understood, it is through the innumerable different degrees which exist in the manifestation of each of the

27

The Qur’an Revealed  Divine names. Furthermore, the infinitude of Divine manifestations is also given as evidence of the necessity of the hereafter and eternal existence: Since the mirrors reflecting the sacred beauties of those Names and the tableaux displaying their beautiful embroideries and the pages setting forth their beautiful truths are all the beings of the universe, those constant and eternal Names will entirely and unceasingly renew and change the universe through their manifestations as a consequence of that sacred Divine love and due to the mystery of Self-Subsistence. In this way they will display their endless manifestations and infinite, meaningful embroideries and books both to the witnessing gaze of the All-Glorious Self-Subsistent One, Whom they signify, and to the studious gaze of uncountable numbers of conscious creatures and creatures endowed with spirits, and will display countless tableaux out of a finite and limited thing and numerous individuals out of a single individual and multiple truths out of a single truth. 42

Not only, then, do the ceaseless manifestations of the Divine ensure that the cosmos is created afresh at every instant, they also require the continuation of existence beyond the duration of the temporal realm and into the domain of the hereafter. Eternal beauty, as Nursi asserts elsewhere, requires eternal admirers, and thus the eternity of the One who is worshipped demands the eternity of those who worship.43

Glory (jalāl) and beauty (jamāl): sources of all diversity

It is, Nursi intimates, through the manifestation of Divine attributes in their infinitely varied degrees that the existence of that which is ‘other-than-God’ can be revealed. However, this is not the whole story. For it is the distinction between two particular groups of names which lies at the heart of the diversity that is witnessed in the cosmos. In Nursi’s own words, The All-Glorious Creator of the universe has two sorts of Names: those pertaining to His Glory (jalāl) and those pertaining to His Beauty (jamāl). Since it is required that these Names demonstrate their decrees through different manifestations, the Glorious Creator blended together opposites in the universe. Bringing them face to face, He gave them aggressive and defensive positions, in the form of a sort of wise and beneficial contest. Through making the opposites transgress one another’s bounds, He brought conflict and change into being, and made the universe subject to the law of change and transformation and the principles of progress and advancement. In humankind, the comprehensive fruit of the tree of creation, He made that law of contest in even stranger form, and opening the door to striving, which would be the means of all human progress, He gave Satan’s party certain faculties with which to be able to challenge the party of God.44

The relationship between the jalālī and the jamālī attributes is dealt with at some length in Chapter Two. Suffice to say here that all of the apparent polar opposites which are witnessed in creation – darkness/light, benefit/harm, praiseworthiness/blameworthiness and so on – are made possible only by the interplay of these two groups of attributes. The jalāli attributes are associated with God’s incomparability (tanzīh), while the jamālī attributes are closely connected with His similarity (tashbīh). From one perspective, God is held to be incomparable with anything that exists and, as such, is ontologically ‘above’ the cosmos,

28

  On Divine Unity which is but a mere shadow or reflection, with no substantial existence of its own. From the point of view of Divine incomparability, therefore, God is, and will always be, completely inaccessible to His creatures and can never be known as He really is, in and of Himself. As far as His incomparability is concerned, then, God is the God of the apophatic theology which we discussed in the section on ‘necessary existence’ earlier in the chapter. But as certain scholars have remarked, such an entity cannot be a God Whom one is able to love and worship, for such a God is too remote and incomprehensible.45 It is in order to enable man to attain the salvific love of God that the Quran does not confine itself in its description of God to negatory attributes or qualities that describe God’s inaccessibility alone: it also mentions numerous positive attributes which, as a counterbalance to Divine incomparability, highlight Divine similarity or tashbīh. Thus while God is described as having qualities such as distance (bu‘d), grandeur (kibriyā), sublimity (‘az. ama) and holiness (quddusiyya), all of which are connected with that aspect of the Divine which is difficult, if not impossible, for man to fathom completely, He is also described as having qualities which man is able to understand much more easily, for the simple reason that they are qualities that he is familiar with and, indeed, appears to share. And so God is described as having beauty (jamāl), compassion (shafaqa), love (mah. abba), nearness (qurb), forgiveness (maghfira), and so on. These attributes, which have a resonance for man that the negative attributes do not, are thus used to complement Divine incomparability (tanzīh) with Divine similarity (tashbīh). The caveat, of course, is that although one may qualify God by attributes which may also be predicated of human beings, it is impossible to say that God is beautiful in the way that a rose is beautiful, or that God shows compassion in the way that a mother shows compassion. God may be beautiful and He may be compassionate, but He is beautiful and compassionate in a sense that befits His incomparability. In other words, human attributes of perfection such as beauty and compassion are nothing but pale shadows of their Divine counterparts, on which they depend for their existence. From one perspective, then, God’s compassion is similar to man’s compassion; indeed, were it not so, it would be impossible for man to have any understanding whatsoever of this particular Divine attribute. From another perspective, however, God’s compassion is nothing like human compassion, which is by default limited by man’s natural finitude and imperfection. The difference between the attributes of perfection which are predicated of God and those which are predicated of man is perhaps better understood if we look at the seven ‘sacred attributes’ mentioned earlier. For example, God is described as seeing (bas.īr) and sight is attributed to man too. However, while the existence of human sight allows us to reach a certain understanding of Divine sight, to which it is subsidiary and upon which it is dependent, it is clear that in fact, human sight is really nothing like Divine sight at all. Human sight is achieved through material means and is limited, while Divine sight is both immaterial and unbounded. The same applies to the other attributes such as knowledge (‘ilm), hearing (sam‘ ), life (h. ayāt ), will (irāda), power (qudra) and speech (takallum), all of which are limited in man on account of his dependence on material means in order to effect them, but which are unlimited and absolute in God on account of the fact that He is self-sufficient (ghanī ) and totally above the need for material instruments with which to express His perfections. It is for this reason that although the Quran itself ascribes many jamālī attributes to God, it also asserts on numerous occasions that God is ultimately above

29

The Qur’an Revealed  description.46 As Ibn al-‘Arabī says, the Quran establishes a relationship between man and God by stressing those attributes which connote His similarity to His creatures; without such a relationship, man would never be able to love God, Who would remain eternally inaccessible.47 Yet once the relationship is established, the Quran is quick to remind man that even though there are ties of similarity which bind the created to the Creature, God is Single and Unique and There is none like unto Him. 48 This apparent duality of the Divine as exemplified by the nominal opposition of jalālī and jamālī attributes is important because without it, the diversity in creation, and with it the distinction between God and that which is ‘other-than-God’, would arguably be unrecognisable. Paradoxically, it is this Divine duality – the fact that God is incomparable with regard to His essence yet similar with regard to certain aspects of the relationship He has with His creatures – which ultimately reinforces the notion of His unity. This can be better understood by looking at two complementary aspects of this unity – one which accords with His incomparability and the other with His similarity – expressed by the terms wah. dāniyya and ah. adiyya.

Divine Unity (wah.  dāniyya) and Oneness (ah.  adiyya)

When used in relation to God, the English word ‘unity’ is somewhat problematic, for it is often used indiscriminately to describe a number of different Arabic words with highly nuanced meanings. Thus terms such as tawh. īd, wah. da, wah. dāniyya, wāh. idiyya and ah. adiyya, all from the same triliteral root w - h.  - d, and each denoting a different aspect of Divine unity, have tended traditionally to be rendered as the same word in English and have consequently become lost in translation. More exacting scholars have tried to distinguish between these different aspects by finding appropriately different terms in English with which to convey them. The term tawh. īd, for example, which appears in the title of this chapter, means ‘belief in, or declaration of, Divine Unity’, while wah. da, which literally means ‘the state of being alone from others’, refers to that which is believed in, namely the unity of God in general. The terms wah.  dāniyya - which, slightly confusingly, is often used interchangeably with wāh. idiyya – and ah. adiyya are slightly less straightforward when it comes to translation, and present themselves in many different English guises when encountered in modern translations of Muslim theological texts. However, not only is their translation often problematic, there seems to be no definitive take on their precise conceptual meanings. Nursi, who uses the two terms on numerous occasions throughout the Risale, defines and describes them as follows: Just as the majesty of dominicality (h. ishmat-i rubūbiyya), which is manifested in the totality of the universe, proves and demonstrates Divine Unity(wah. dāniyya), so dominical bounty (ni‘mat-i rabbāniyya), which bestows on the members of animate creatures their regular provisions, proves and demonstrates Divine Oneness (ah. adiyya). As for Unity (wāhidiyya), it is to say that all those creatures belong to One and they look to One and they are the creation of One. Whereas by Oneness (ah. adiyya) is meant that most of the Names of the Creator of all things are manifested in all beings. For example, the light of the sun may be seen as analogous to Unity by reason of its comprehending the face of the earth, while the fact that its light and heat, the seven colours in its light and some sort of shadow of it are found in all transparent objects and

30

  On Divine Unity drops of water makes them analogous to Oneness. And the fact that most of the Maker’s Names are manifested in each single thing, especially in each animate creature, and above all in man, points to Oneness.49

The context in which Nursi’s definition is set is a series of passages in which he explains the meaning of an “affirmation of Divine Unity” that was, he says, “imparted” to him, in Arabic, during a period of meditation. The affirmation, which he includes in his discourse on the nature of Divine dominion (mulk), is given below: His is the dominion because: the macrocosm (al-‘ālam al-kabīr) is similar to the microcosm (al-‘ālam al-s.aghīr); what is fashioned by His power (qudra) is a missive expressing His determining (qadar); His creating the macrocosm makes it as a place of prostration (masjid), while His giving of existence to the microcosm makes it as prostrating (sājid); His bringing the former into being makes it as a property (mulk), while His giving of existence to the latter makes it as owned (mamlūk); His art in the former displays it as a book (kitāb), while His colouring in the latter shines through speech (khit. āb); His power (qudra) in the former reveals His majesty (hishma), while His mercy (rah. ma) in the latter arrays His bounty (ni‘ma); His majesty in the former testifies that He is One (al-wāh. id), while His bounty in the latter proclaims that He is Single, Undivided (al-ah. ad); His stamp (sikka) on the former is on all things, universal and particular, while His seal on the latter is on the body and on the limbs.50

In Nursi’s elegant juxtaposition of contrasting but complementary ideas, one sees definite shades of the Hermetic notion of ‘as above, so below’ : the macrocosm – the cosmos with all its beings – is simply the microcosm writ large, while the microcosm, which is man, reflects all of the names and attributes which form the pillars of the phenomenal world.51 The macrocosm is clearly more representative here of the jalālī attributes, while the microcosm represents those which pertain to Divine jamāl : the former is the domain of power and majesty, while the latter is home to mercy and bounty; the former is the place of prostration (masjid) to the one before Whom all prostrate (masjūd), while the latter is the place of those who are, through their creational make-up, constantly prostrating (sājid); the former is His dominion (mulk) and the embodiment of ownership (mālikiyya), while the latter is, through its existential poverty, owned (mamlūk) and in subjugation, and so on. Nursi’s “affirmation of unity” not only unifies the jalālī and the jamālī attributes but it also brings together the Creator and the created into one coherent existential whole. For just as one cannot have a worshipper without One Who is worshipped, from another perspective, One cannot claim to be worthy of worship unless there are worshippers. Similarly, just as there cannot be those who are owned unless there is an Owner, to be an Owner there must exist of necessity those who are owned. It would be tempting at this point to say that the logical concomitant of Divine Unity, at least as it is expressed in passages like these, is that God needs the macrocosm and the microcosm as much as they need Him, although clearly this cannot be the case. The hand, after all, does not need the shadow that it casts, although in one very real sense it cannot be without it. It cannot be without it not because of need, however, but because that is, quite simply, how it is. The hand has primordiality; the shadow, only a subsidiary, dependent existence. Yet there can be no denying that they form a unity.

31

The Qur’an Revealed  Against this contextual backdrop we can now return to, and better understand, Nursi’s definition of wāh. idiyya and ah. adiyya. To affirm unity (wāh. idiyya), for Nursi, is to affirm that all beings in the phenomenal realm are created and thus attributable to one Source alone. Nursi’s example of the light of the sun is helpful here. If one looks at a thousand reflective objects placed under the blazing sun on a cloudless day, one concludes that the sunlight reflected by them belongs to the sun. There is only one sun, and that sun comprehends and embraces all reflective objects equally and, from the sun’s point of view, without differentiation. To affirm oneness (ah. adiyya), however, is to affirm that each and every reflective object reflects the sun in its own unique way, in accordance with its size, shape, capacity, degrees of opacity and reflectivity, and so on. The singularity of each reflective object is confirmed, Nursi says, by the fact that if one looks at it, one will find that the light, heat, seven colours and “some sort of shadow” or reflection of the single sun can be seen in it. From this it is understood that not only is the sun which shines into the object one, but that its manifestation in the object is single and unique, like the sun itself. If we move from the sun analogy directly to the relationship between God and the creation, the distinction between wāh. idiyya and ah. adiyya should now become more clear. God’s wāh. idiyya is inferred from a single act, such as the sending of rain, which falls on all of the living creatures in an orchard equally: the source of the rain – Divine mercy, in Quranic terms – is One but the recipients are many. From the perspective of the many, the source is undisputedly one: when one looks at an orchard that is being showered with rain, the conclusion is that the source of the rain or mercy is one, for there cannot be numerous sources of rain, or, indeed, of mercy, to water the plants and quench the thirst of the animals in the orchard. As Nursi points out in numerous places throughout the Risale, if bounties reach man from more than one source, there must be as many sources as there are bounties, and this, he says, the human intellect cannot countenance. Thus the rain which falls on an orchard, watering numerous plants and quenching the thirst of countless animals, falls from one source. Furthermore, it falls equally and without discrimination on all parts of the orchard. As for God’s ah. adiyya, this can be inferred from the fact that the rain which is sent from that single source has a single and unique way of functioning in each and every one of the things on which it falls, depending on individual natures, needs and capacities. The rain which falls on a rose, for example, will be assimilated and used by the rose in a manner unique to the rose, in accordance with its particular needs, as though the rain were falling with the requirements of that specific rose in mind. The singularity and uniqueness of the rain’s functioning within each particular plant or animal in that orchard is a reflection of the singularity and uniqueness of the Source of the rain. Numerous such examples may be invoked to illustrate the subtle difference between these two modalities of Divine unity. The universality of fingerprints among human beings, for example, suggests in the Nursian schema that the Creator of fingerprints is One rather than many, while the uniqueness of each individual fingerprint reflects the singularity and uniqueness of the One who created them. The same applies to eyes or snowflakes, to stars or grains of sand. Indeed the same, Nursi argues, applies to every single created being in the cosmos, for the fact that they all share existence points to One, and One alone, Who bestows existence on all things equally, without any discrimination. That shared existence, which can

32

  On Divine Unity be from one Source and one Source only, points to the inclusive unity or wāh. idiyya of God which admits no peers or partners in the bestowal of existence or, indeed, its continuance. And the fact that each of those things exists in a unique and singular manner – Nursi describes each of them as having the ‘stamp of oneness’ (sikka-i ah. adiyya) on its face – points to the exclusive unity of God. Not only does it show God’s singularity and uniqueness, but it also serves to demonstrate that the God of the Quran is very much a ‘working God’ who is attentive to the individual needs of each unique constituent part of the cosmos at all times. The concept of ‘unity within plurality’, then, as embodied in the concept-pair of wāh. idiyya and ah. adiyya, serves to demonstrate a unity which precludes firstly the notion of multiple creators, and secondly the notion that God is a ‘prime mover’ who sets the cosmos in motion and allows it to run its course. Wāh. idiyya may thus be said to indicate the oneness of many, while al-Wāh. id is the One Who entails or encompasses the many; ah. adiyya is the oneness of the One, while al-Ahād is the unique and singular Creator whose stamp of uniqueness and singularity is on each and every created thing.

Unity from the perspective of origination (ibdā) and composition (inshā)

The creation of things, Nursi says, is either in the form of their origination from prior nonexistence (ibdā) or their composition (inshā) from other beings which already exist. If the origination of things is attributed to a single Being, Nursi continues, then that Being is bound by default to possess all-encompassing knowledge and power; otherwise It would not be able to prevail over a single thing, let alone all things. In this way, the giving of external existence to things whose forms are present in His knowledge or who exist as knowledge, and bringing them out of apparent non-existence, is as easy and simple as striking a match or spreading a special liquid over invisible writing in order to reveal it, or transposing an image from photographic film to paper. Through the ‘command of “Be!” and it is,’ 52 the Maker brings into external existence from apparent non-existence things whose plans, programmes, shapes and proportions are present in His knowledge.53

Here, Nursi is focusing on origination or ibdā, a term which is often misconstrued as denoting ex nihilo creation. Nursi’s use of the term ‘creation from nothing’, which appears in several places in the Risale, is particularly mystifying, for he makes it quite clear on a number of occasions that nothing can be created out of nothing, and that if phenomena appear to emerge from non-existence, it is indeed only apparent non-existence. His use of the example of invisible ink is instructive in this regard. Beings, before they emerge into the phenomenal world, have a kind of existence in the domain of Divine knowledge. This existence may be likened to that of the plan of a building in the mind of an architect: when the building is finally built, it cannot be said to have originated from nothing, for it is based on a carefully considered and measured plan. Similarly, beings emerging into the phenomenal world from the world of the unseen may appear to be emerging from nothing, but they are in fact being ‘translated’ into phenomenal forms from their previously immaterial forms which existed in the knowledge of their Creator. Nothing, therefore, comes from nothing, even though to the untrained eye it may appear to do so.

33

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi then turns his attention to the second modality of creation: This kind is in the form of composition and art, and not creating from non-existence and nothing; being in the form of gathering together from the elements and surroundings, it resembles the members of a regiment mustering at the call of a bugle after having dispersed to rest, and the soldiers collecting together in regular and orderly fashion, and in order to facilitate this exercise and preserve their positions, the whole army being like the power, law and eye of its commander. In exactly the same way, as though they were the power, law and officials of the Monarch of the Universe, the minute particles under the command of that Monarch —together with the beings with whom they have contact— are mobilized according to the principles of His knowledge and determining and the laws of His pervasive power. In order to form a living being, they assume a specified measure and proportion, which resembles an immaterial mould specified by Divine knowledge and determining, and there they stop. 54

Composition (inshā) is different from origination (ibdā) for it occurs through the coming together of different things – particles, elements, compounds and so on – which already have existence in the phenomenal world in order to form a new being. When the Quran speaks of God as the creator (khāliq), composition is one of the modalities of creation that it has in mind, for while the verb khalaqa, of which khāliq is a verbal noun, is used traditionally to denote the act of ‘creating’ in general, it also signifies the production of one thing from or out of another or others. Nursi thus differentiates khalq-i inshā (compositional creation) from khalq-i ibdā (originative creation). If things are referred to different hands and causes, and to nature, then as all rational minds would agree, no cause can in any way create from nothing and non-existence. For causes do not possess comprehensive knowledge and all-pervading power, and nonexistence would not be only apparent and external, it would be absolute. And absolute non-existence can in no way be the source of existence. In which case, creation would be in the form of composition. But if in the form of composition, the particles of a fly or a flower could come together only with innumerable difficulties after collecting the body of a fly and parts of a flower from all over the earth and passing them through a fine sieve. Even having come together, since there would be no immaterial moulds existing as knowledge to preserve them in orderly form without dispersing, physical, natural moulds - in fact moulds to the number of their members - would be necessary so that the particles that had come together could form the bodies of those living creatures.55

Unity from the perspective of order and regularity (intiz.  ām)

Throughout the entire cosmos, Nursi says, and in each of the pillars, parts and beings which constitute it, there exists the most perfect order and regularity (intiz. ām). But the substances and purposive beings that form the means whereby the cosmos is driven and administered are, on the level of pure materiality, almost identical in nature, and are spread in great diffusion across the length and breadth of the phenomenal world. The elements and species that construct, inhabit and power the vast city of the cosmos are intimately connected, forming a vast complex of concentric and intersecting circles. Yet

34

  On Divine Unity the Divine names and acts which are at work in the cosmos are able to encompass and comprehend all things, from the most general to the most specific, despite the innate complexity of the cosmic realm and the tight interdependence of its constituent parts. The fact that each of the Divine names is cognizant of each and every cosmic phenomenon is, for Nursi, a sure sign of the Divine unity which underlies all dominical acts, conferring on them an order, harmony and equilibrium that would not be possible if created beings were left to their own devices. All of this, Nursi says, demands and affirms the following: The Maker and Disposer of this cosmos, the Monarch and Nurturer of this realm, the Master and Builder of this palace, is one, unique, sole. He has neither like nor peer, neither minister nor aide. He has neither partner nor opposite; He has neither inability nor deficiency. Yes, order is in itself a perfect expression of unity; it demands a single orderer. It leaves no place for the assignment of partners to God, the source of dispute and dissension. There is a wise and precise order inherent in all things, whether universal or particular, from the total scheme of the cosmos and the daily and annual rotation of the earth down to the physiognomy of man, the complex of senses in man’s head and the circulation of white and red cells in man’s blood. Nothing other than One Who is Absolutely Powerful and Absolutely Wise can stretch out its hand intentionally and creatively toward anything, nor interfere with it. On the contrary, all things are recipients, means of manifestation, and passive.56

For Nursi, the fact that such a vast array of different phenomena should interact with such harmony and equilibrium, pursuing clear purposes with a view to certain definite benefits, shows that there is a knowledge and wisdom at work which are purposive and mediated by will and choice. Certainly, and in all events, this wisdom-nurturing regularity, this infinitely varied ordering of the cosmos that before our very eyes assures various benefits, proves and affirms to a self-evident degree that the Creator and Disposer of all beings is one, an agent possessing will and choice. Everything comes into being through His power, assumes a particular state through His will, and takes on a particular form through His choice. For example, the heat-giving lamp of this hospice that is the world is one; its candle that is the basis for the reckoning of time is one; its merciful sponge is one; its fiery cook is one; its life-giving beverage is one; its well-guarded field is one, as well as a thousand and one other instances of oneness. It follows from all of these instances of oneness that the Maker and Master of this hospice is also one, that He is extremely generous and hospitable, for He employs numerous high-ranking and great officials to serve the animate guests of His hospice.57

The impresses and manifestations of countless other Divine names, says Nursi, such as ‘AllWise’ (h. akīm), ‘Compassionate’ (rah. īm), ‘Giver of forms’ (mus.awwir), ‘Disposer’ (mudabbir), ‘Quickener’ (muh. yī) and ‘Nurturer’ (murabbī ) are also to be seen at work in every corner of the cosmos, and together with attributes such as wisdom (h. ikma), mercy (rah. ma) and grace (‘ināya) are all one and point only to One. They pervade every atom of being, Nursi declares, with each Divine name, act and attribute having a place there.

35

The Qur’an Revealed  They also complement the imprint of each other in such a way that it is as if those Names and deeds were uniting in such fashion that power becomes identical with wisdom and mercy, and wisdom becomes identical with grace and life. For example, as soon as the activity of the Name of Quickener appears in a thing, the activity of numerous other Names such as Creator, Giver of Form and Provider also appears at the same instant, everywhere and in the same system. This self-evidently establishes and proves that that which is designated by the Names and the Doer of the comprehensive deeds which appear everywhere in the same fashion must also be one, single and unique.58

The Divine names are, Nursi is saying, nothing but different aspects of the same reality. God’s creation and His giving of form occur together, and they are distinguished one from the other only when they are viewed from different perspectives. Understood holistically, however, the whole panoply of Divine names becomes a single reality, signifying a single, unique Possessor of perfection. And a single Possessor of all perfections is able to command and press into service with absolute ease and order all of the countless elements, compounds and particles that are the constituent parts of the phenomenal world. In turn, Nursi says, the evident ‘obedience’ of these constituent parts and their readiness to accept the directives of the Divine orderer provide further evidence of His unity and Oneness: The elements that are the substance and material of creation encompass the whole earth. Each of the species of creation that bears an imprint attesting unity is diffused throughout the earth in unity and, so to speak, conquers it. This also proves to the degree of being selfevident that those elements together with what they embrace, and those species, together with their separate members, are the product and property of a single being. They are the products and servants of so Unique and Powerful a One that He employs those vast and imperious elements as obedient servants and those species diffused throughout the earth as well-disciplined soldiers.59

Unity from the perspective of dominicality (rubūbiyya)

The epithet al-Rabb is another of the Divine names which suffers from infelicitous translations. Rendered traditionally as ‘Lord’, it is a name which, in Arabic, has a wealth of connotations which, pace even the most exacting Quranic translators, simply cannot be captured in a single English word. The verbal noun rabb from the root r-bb has the meanings ‘one who raises up (a child)’, ‘sustainer’, ‘nurturer’ and ‘educator’, as well as ‘owner’, ‘possessor’ and ‘master’. The word tarbiyya, translated traditionally as ‘education’, has interesting semantic parallels with its English equivalent. The word ‘education’ comes from the Latin educere, which means ‘to draw out’, primarily in the sense of bringing to realization what was there, in potentia, all the time. Education in the true sense of the word, then, means to bring out that which is within, rather than to impose anything from the outside, which is arguably what modern education has largely become. The Arabic root r – bb has similar connotations. The Arabic word for jam, to use a trivial but telling example, is murabba, which is nothing but fruit which has been subjected to tarbiyya : the state of being jam, which exists in potentia in all raw fruit, is realized through the process of nurturing and bringing out that which lies within. This drawing out of what exists within

36

  On Divine Unity a being, and this nurturing and sustaining of phenomena so that they are able to reach their full potential or, as Nursi calls it, their ‘point of perfection’, is the work of Divine dominicality or rubūbiyya. The ubiquitous workings of a wise and compassionate hidden hand throughout the cosmos, especially in animate beings and their nurturing and development, everywhere in the same fashion and yet in a totally unexpected form, must be, without doubt, the emanation and light of an absolute dominicality and a decisive proof of its reality. An absolute dominicality cannot accept any partnership. For since the important aims and purposes of dominicality, such as the manifestation of its beauty, the proclamation of its perfection, the revelation of its precious arts and the display of its hidden accomplishments, are combined and concentrated in particulars and animate beings, the slightest attribution to God of a partner, when entering even the most particular of things and the smallest of animate beings, will frustrate the attainment of those purposes and destroy those aims. Averting the faces of conscious beings from those purposes and the One Who conceived them toward causes will be totally opposed and hostile to the essence of dominicality, and absolute dominicality cannot in any way countenance it.60

In order for each being to move from potentiality to actuality and reach its ‘point of perfection’, a dominical creativity is needed that is single, all-encompassing and self-sufficient. To posit the collaboration of multiple, autonomous agents – ‘partners’ to God – is to posit a scenario in which the purpose underpinning that dominical activity, namely the display of the names of God through the nurturing and sustaining of His loci of manifestation, would be stymied on account of the interference of multiple hands. Divine dominicality cannot be carved up among material causes, Nursi seems to be saying here, for the simple reason that material causes, being contingent and unconscious, can have no cognizance of purpose, let alone the will to carry it out.

Unity from the perspective of sovereignty (h. ākimiyya)

Even a cursory view of the cosmos, Nursi asserts, is enough to convince one that in many aspects it resembles a vast kingdom or city-state that is administered with utmost wisdom and judiciousness, its subjects engaged diligently and obediently in their various allotted tasks and functions. According to the military metaphor contained in the verse, God’s are the armies of the heavens and earth,61 the prevailing creative commands, imperious orders and kingly laws enunciated in those numerous armies, which extend from the hosts of the atom, the battalions of the vegetable kingdom, the brigades of the animal kingdom, to the armies of the stars, and embrace both the lowliest soldier and the loftiest commander — they all indicate self-evidently the existence of an absolute sovereignty and a universal authority.62

The orderly administration of the cosmos, which runs like a well-oiled machine or a perfectly ruled empire, is evidence for Nursi of the absolute sovereignty (h. ākimiyya) of

37

The Qur’an Revealed  its Maker and Ruler. And absolute sovereignty allows no room for peers, partners or helpers. For according to the decisive truth of the verse, Were there to be in the heavens and earth gods other than God, verily they would be corrupted,63 if numerous hands all engage assertively in the same task, the result will be confusion. If there are two kings in one country, or even two headmen in one district, order will disappear and administration be replaced by anarchy. But on the contrary we see everywhere such order, from the wing of the fly to the lamps of the heavens, from the cells of the body to the signs of the planets, that there is no possibility for the intervention of any partner in God’s affairs. Sovereignty is, moreover, a station of dignity; to accept a rival would flout the dignity of sovereignty. The fact that man, who needs the assistance of many people on account of his impotence, will kill his brothers and offspring in the cruellest fashion for the sake of some petty, apparent and temporary sovereignty, shows that sovereignty rejects all notion of partnership. If so feeble a one acts thus for the sake of so petty a sovereignty, it follows that the Possessor of Absolute Power, the Master of All Creation, will never permit one other than Himself to participate in His sacred sovereignty, the means to His real and universal dominicality and Divinity.64

Unity from the perspective of grandeur (kibriyā) and sublimity (‘az.  ama)

The grandeur (kibriyā) and sublimity (‘az. ama) of God which are evident from His creative acts are such, Nursi argues, that it is impossible to countenance the interference of peers or partners in those acts, all of which point to the fact that He is unique and possessed of absolute power. This Being creates and then administers at a single time and in a single fashion the stars that are thousands of light years distant from each other. He creates at a single time and in a single form the countless members of the same species of flower, distributed over the east and the west, the north and south of the globe. He administers, nurtures, quickens, distinguishes and adorns more than two hundred thousand different species of plant and animal in the space of five or six weeks, with the utmost regularity and equilibrium, without any confusion, defect or error, in order to provide during each spring on the face of the earth more than a hundred thousand examples of the supreme resurrection, and thus prove before man’s eyes a remarkable event, now belonging to the past and the realm of the Unseen, namely the creation of the heavens and the earth in six days, as indicated in the verse He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in six days. 65 This Being causes the earth to revolve, as evidenced in the verse He merges night with day, and day with night,66 and turns the night into the page on which the events of the day are written. Moreover, this same Being knows and administers according to His own will, all at the same time, the most secret and obscure thoughts that occur to men’s hearts. Since each of the aforementioned acts is in reality one act, it follows that the One Who does them is a Glorious, Unique and Powerful Being, enjoying such grandeur and sublimity that nowhere, in nothing and in no way does it leave the slightest possibility for the acceptance of partnership.67

Given that this sublime power and grandeur exist at the highest level of perfection in this Being, comprehending all things, the ascription to Him of partners is meaningless. For to

38

  On Divine Unity ascribe partners would impugn both His uniqueness and His power; it would imply that there is some fault or deficiency in His grandeur, and that His perfections are in fact less than perfect. It would, in short, call in to question the whole notion of His absoluteness. No sound intellect, Nursi says, could countenance such a thing. Thus the assignment of partners to God is, then, by virtue of the offence it causes to God’s Grandeur, the dignity of his Glory and His Sublimity, so grave a crime that the Quran of Miraculous Exposition decrees with an earnest threat that God does not pardon the assignment to Him of a partner; He pardons whatever is lesser than that.68

Unity from the perspective of dominical absoluteness (it. lāq), comprehensiveness (ih.  at. a) and infinitude (lā-nihā’iyya)

There is ample evidence of Divine unity, Nursi argues, in the absoluteness, compre­ hensiveness and infinitude of the dominical acts which can be witnessed in the cosmos: For it is only God’s wisdom and will that limits and restricts those deeds, as well as the inherent capacities of the objects and places in which they manifest themselves. Stray chance, dumb nature, blind force, unconscious causality and the elements that without restriction are scattered in every direction — none of these can have any part in the most balanced, wise, perspicacious, life-giving, orderly and firm deeds of the Creator. They are used, rather, by the command, will and power of the Glorious Doer as an apparent veil to conceal His power.69

In its ceaseless creative activity in the cosmos, Nursi argues, Divine dominicality is absolute, admitting of no defect or deficiency. If the Divine deeds are restricted in any way, it is not because of any lack on the part of their Agent: if the acts of God are restricted and delimited in any way, it is only because Divine wisdom and will decree that they be so and because created phenomena only have so much innate capacity to receive the imprint of those deeds. The fact that God’s dominical acts are absolute also means that they are infinite in number and scope, and thus encompass and comprehend all things without exception. This leaves no room for interference in creation by material causes, which are by default existentially impotent and are utilised by the Creator purely as a means of concealing His power beneath the cover of apparent causation. By way of illustration, Nursi gives three examples from the sūra al-Nah.  l (The Bee). The first concerns the bee itself, and the production of honey. Consider the verse Your Sustainer inspired in the bee that it should seek a dwelling-place in the mountains.70 Now the bee is, with respect to its disposition and function, such a miracle of Divine power that a whole chapter of the Quran has been named after it. For to inscribe in the minute head of that little honey-machine a complete programme for the fulfilment of its important task; to place in its diminutive stomach the most delicious of foods and to ripen it there; to place in its sting poison capable of destroying and killing animate beings, without causing any harm to its own body or the member in question — to do all this with the utmost care and knowledge, with exceeding wisdom and purposiveness, partakes

39

The Qur’an Revealed  of a perfect orderliness and equilibrium, and thus unconscious, disorderly, disequilibriated nature or chance could never interfere or participate in any of this.71

The fact that this dominical activity is so comprehensive, taking place in the countless bees that are scattered across the face of the earth with the same wisdom and equilibrium, and at the same time and in the same fashion, are evidence for Nursi of Divine unity. The second example concerns the production of milk: Consider the verse There is for you a lesson in cattle. From what is within their bodies, between excretions and blood, we produce for your drink, milk, pure and agreeable to those who drink it.72 This verse is a decree overflowing with useful instruction. For to place in the udders of cows, camels, goats and sheep, as well as the breasts of human mothers, in the midst of blood and excretions but without being polluted by them, a substance the exact opposite, namely pure, clean, pleasant, nutritive and white milk, and to inspire in their hearts tenderness toward their young that is still more pleasant, sweeter and more valuable than milk — this requires such a degree of mercy, wisdom, knowledge, power, will and care that it cannot in any way be the work of turbulent chance, of the chaotic elements, or of blind forces.73

The fact that the dominical act of the nourishing of the young with milk takes place all over the globe and in the breasts of innumerable mothers belonging to thousands of different species, all at the same time and with the same degree of wisdom and solicitousness constitutes, for Nursi, a self-evident proof of Divine unity.74 Nursi’s third example concerns the fruits of the date palm and the grapevine, both of which are given a special mention by the Quran: Consider the verse From the fruits of the date-palm and the vine you take sugar and fine nourishment; verily therein is a sign for a people possessing intelligence.75 This verse invites our attention to the date and to grapes, saying, “For those with intelligence there is great proof, argument and evidence of the Divine unity in these two fruits. These two fruits yield nurture and sustenance, fresh and dry fruit, and give rise to most delicious forms of food; yet the trees that bear them stand in waterless sand and dry soil, and are thus miracles of power and wonders of wisdom. They are each of them like a factory producing sweet sugar, a machine manufacturing honey-like syrup, a work of art created with perfect order and sensitive balance, wisdom and care; hence anyone with a grain of intelligence will say on contemplating them, ‘The one who made them in this fashion may very well be the Creator of the whole cosmos.’” For in front of our eyes each vine branch the thickness of a finger will hold twenty bunches of grapes, and each bunch will in turn contain hundreds of sugary grapes, each like a little pump emitting syrup. To clothe the surface of each grape with a fine, delicate, thin and colourful protection; to place in its delicate and soft heart seeds with their hard shells, which are like its retentive faculty, its programme and the story of its life; to manufacture in its stomach a sweetmeat like the halva of Paradise, a honey like the water of Kawthar; to create an infinite number of such grapes over the face of the entire earth, with the same care and wisdom and wonderful art, and at the same time and in the same fashion — this proves in self-evident fashion that the one who fulfils these tasks is

40

  On Divine Unity the Creator of the whole cosmos, and this deed, requiring as it does infinite power and limitless wisdom, can be only His deed.76

Again, the ubiquity of this dominical act, which produces the same kind of sustenance all over the face of the globe at the same time and with the same degree of wisdom and artistry, is proof for Nursi that it is the act of one Creator alone. For blind and stray, disorderly and unconscious, aimless, aggressive and anarchic forces, nature and causality cannot have anything to do with this most sensitive balance, this most skilful art, this most wise scheme. They cannot even stretch out their hands toward it. It falls to them only to be employed through the dominical command merely as passive objects and means of facilitation. And so, just like the three points proving Divine unity contained in the three truths indicated in these three verses, the countless manifestations and workings of infinite dominical deeds attest unanimously to the unity of a Single One of Unity, the All-Glorious One.77

Unity from the perspective of disposing (tadbīr) and administering (idāra)

The cosmos, Nursi argues, is run with perfect order and equilibrium, with all of its constituent parts subjugated to commands which cause them to be of assistance one to the other, be they the swiftly moving celestial objects in space; the numerous elements, compounds and substances which are scattered throughout the universe and from which all things are formed; or the weak and needy denizens of earth. All necessary measures concerning the affairs of creatures are taken with the utmost judiciousness, he says, helping to make the cosmos function like a well-adorned palace or perfectly ruled kingdom. Nursi cites the coming of spring as an example of the administration which keeps the cosmos running as it does. We will show, by means of a comparison, a single page and stage of that administration as it manifests itself in the spring on the face of the earth. Let us suppose, for example, that some wondrous world conqueror assembled an army from four hundred thousand different groups and nationalities, and supplied the clothes and weapons, the instructions and dismissals and salaries of every group and nationality, separately and variously, without any defect or shortcoming, without error or mistake, at the proper time, without any delay or confusion, with the utmost regularity and in the most perfect form. Now, no cause other than the extraordinary power of that wondrous commander could stretch out its hand to attempt that vast, complex, subtle, balanced, multitudinous and just administration. Were it to stretch out its hand, it would destroy the equilibrium and cause confusion. So too we see with our own eyes that an unseen hand creates and administers every spring a magnificent army composed of four hundred thousand different species. In the autumn —an example of the day of resurrection— it dismisses three hundred thousand out of those four hundred thousand species of plants and animals from their duties, and they go on leave through the activity of death and in the name of decease. Then, in spring, which is an example of the ‘gathering together’ (h. ashr) that follows resurrection,

41

The Qur’an Revealed  it constructs three hundred thousand examples of raising from the dead in the space of a few weeks, with the utmost order and discipline. In the case of the tree, four such resurrections take place with respect to the tree itself, its leaves, its flowers and its fruits. After showing spring to our eyes exactly like the preceding one, it gives each species and group in that army of glory that contains four hundred thousand different species its appropriate sustenance and provision, its defensive weapons and distinctive garments, its orders and dismissals, and all the tools and instruments it needs, with the utmost order and regularity, without error or slip, without confusion or omission, in unexpected fashion and at the proper time. It thus proves its unity, oneness, uniqueness, and infinite power and boundless mercy within the perfection of dominicality, sovereignty and wisdom, and writes with the pen of Divine Determining this proclamation of Divine unity on the face of the earth, on the page of every spring.78

Nursi concludes that the administering of the spring requires the existence not only of a single and unique administrator, but also of numerous attributes of perfection, including absolute power and mercy together with perfect dominicality, sovereignty and wisdom. Moreover, disposal and administering are used by Nursi to demonstrate not only the unity of God but also the reality of resurrection, of which spring is deemed to be an embodiment in miniature. Resurrection, like prophethood, is a necessary concomitant of Divine unity and therefore it comes as no surprise to find Nursi providing what he believes to be evidence of both with the same argument.

Unity from the perspective of mercifulness (rah.  māniyya)

That all-encompassing mercy is a perfection which imbues all of creation is demonstrated for Nursi by the countless bounties which are bestowed on it constantly and continuously: We see with our own eyes that there is one who has covered the face of the earth with thousands of gifts of mercy and made it into a feasting-place. He has laid out a spread of hundreds of thousands of the different delicious foods of Mercifulness, and made the inside of the earth a storehouse containing thousands of precious bounties of compassionateness and wisdom. That Being sends to us also the earth, in its yearly rotation, like a ship or a train, laden with the finest of the hundreds of thousands of vital human necessities, proceeding from the World of the Unseen; and He sends to us too the spring, like a wagon carrying food and clothing for us. Thus does he nurture us, with utmost compassion. In order for us to profit from those gifts and bounties, He has moreover given us hundreds and thousands of appetites, needs, feelings, sensations and senses. He has given us stomachs that can take pleasure in infinite varieties of food. He has given us such a life that through the senses associated with it we can derive benefit from the innumerable bounties of the vast corporeal world, just as if it were some bounteous spread. He has favoured us with the human state so that we delight in the boundless gifts of both the spiritual and material worlds, through instruments such as the intellect and the heart. Indeed, this cosmos is like a palace fitted out and adorned by the Divine quality of mercy with innumerable antiques and valuable items, which then gives to man’s hands the keys to open all the chests and chambers in that palace, as well as bestowing on man’s nature all the needs and senses that will enable him to make use of them.79

42

  On Divine Unity The mercifulness that embraces all things, Nursi says, is without a doubt a manifestation of oneness (ah. adiyya) within unity (wāh. idiyya). He elaborates by invoking the sun as an example. Through its comprehension and embracing of all things that face it, he says, the sun is an example par excellence of unity or wāh. idiyya. In other words, the sun shines on all things without prejudice or discrimination, and whatever is capable of reflecting the sun’s light then reflects it.80 The all-embracing nature of the sun’s light is similar in this example to the allembracing nature of Divine mercifulness or rah. māniyya, which comprehends and embraces all creatures in a general fashion, without prejudice or distinction. The earth, the seasons, the appetites and the senses – these are examples of mercifulness which are given as general, all-encompassing bounties. When the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, for example, it shines on all of the people at the same time, thus demonstrating rah. māniyya or all-embracing mercy and, by extension, wāhidiyya or unity: the countless people enjoying the sunshine are enjoying the light and warmth that is coming from a single sun rather than numerous different ones. Within this wāh. idiyya, however, there is also the manifestation of oneness or ah. adiyya. As Nursi says, Just as the light of the sun is a parable of unity through its comprehending all things that face it, every bright and transparent object that receives the reflection of the light, heat and seven colours of the sun is also a parable and a symbol of oneness. Hence, whoever sees its all-embracing light will conclude that the sun of this earth is one and unique. Witnessing the warm and luminous reflection of the sun in all bright objects, and even in drops of water, he will say that the oneness of the sun, or the sun itself, is present with its attributes close to all things; it is at the mirror-like heart of all things.81

The sun shines on all things in general and in equal measure, but each thing upon which the sun shines is, from another perspective, receiving the sun’s light in its own unique way, in accordance with its innate capacity. Furthermore, if one looks into a hundred reflective surfaces, one will see a hundred tiny suns, as though there were one unique to each object rather than one which is general to all. For Nursi, this is an example of oneness (ah. adiyya) within unity (wāh. idiyya), and the same is applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the Divine: So too the encompassing of all things by the extensive mercy of the Merciful One of Beauty, like a light, demonstrates the unity (wāhidiyya) of that Merciful One and that He in no way has any partner. Similarly, the fact that under the veil of that all-embracing mercy the lights of most of the Merciful One’s Names and a sort of manifestation of His essence are found in everything, and especially in all living beings, and in man in particular, and the fact that this gives each individual a comprehensiveness arising from life which causes him to look to and be related to the whole universe - this proves the oneness (ah. adiyya) of the Merciful One and that He is present with all things and does all things in all things.82

What is the significance of the fact that Divine mercy is held to indicate the two modalities of Divine unity? The answer, in part at least, lies in the following passage:

43

The Qur’an Revealed  Yes, the Merciful One shows the splendour (hishma) of His glory (jalāl) in the whole of the cosmos and all over the earth through the unity (wāh. idiyya) and comprehensiveness (ih. āt. a) of His mercy (rah. ma). With the manifestation of His oneness (ah. adiyya), He gathers together in every member of all animate species, and particularly man, specimens of all His bounties, orders the tools and instruments of animate beings, and proclaims the special solicitude (shafaqat-i khus.ūs.ī ) of His beauty (jamāl) to each individual, this without shattering the wholeness of the universe. As for man, it is in him that God makes known in concentrated form the various forms of His bounty.83

Unpacking this passage carefully, we are able to discover and clarify a number of different yet interconnected issues. One such issue is that Nursi links rahmāniyya explicitly with wāh. idiyya. Traditionally, the Divine name al-Rah. mān has been understood by Quranic exegetes to refer to the general mercy of God which is bestowed on the whole of creation and on all human beings, be they believers, unbelievers, good or bad.84 Divine bounties of life are, as Nursi points out, distributed throughout the earth and, indeed the whole cosmos, and all human beings are able to enjoy their benefits as sustenance. A similar understanding of rah. māniyya can be found in the Muslim mystical tradition. Ibn al-‘Arabi regards it as an inclusive mercy which is showered upon macrocosm and microcosm alike, while ‘Aziz Nasafī (died c. 1290) describes al-Rah. mān as that aspect of the Divine which distributes existence to the “possible things”, i.e. the forms of beings as they exist in the domain of Divine knowledge before they are brought through the act of creation into the phenomenal world.85 Another issue that Nursi addresses in this passage is the relationship between the Divine names al-Rah. man and al-Rah. im. The locus classicus for this pair of names is, of course, the formulaic Bismillāh al-Rah. mān al-Rah. īm – “In the Name of God, the AllMerciful, the Compassionate” – which appears at the beginning of every Quranic chapter apart from one. While Nursi makes no explicit mention of al-Rah. īm here, it is clear from the context that this is what he means when he talks of the “special solicitude” (shafaqat-i khus.ūs.ī ) that God shows to each individual. This conforms to a certain extent with the mainstream exegetical tradition, which has, for the most part, considered the name alRah. īm and the rah. īmiyya which flows from it as referring to that specific mercy which is bestowed upon the believers and obedient servants alone. The traditional exegetical account finds support in mystical circles too, where rah. īmiyya is understood almost as the kind of mercy that is in a sense obligatory upon God to give to those who are worthy of it. Thus while all human beings receive rah. māniyya by default, they have only the potential to receive rah. īmiyya, which is bestowed upon those who use their God-given capabilities – their knowledge, power, desire, will and so on – in a manner that is conducive to the worship of God.86 Historically, then, both in mainstream exegetical circles and among mystical thinkers, rah. māniyya has been understood as signifying the all-encompassing, inclusive form of mercy which is applied generally, while rah.  īmiyya has been seen as signifying mercy that is exclusive and specific. The Quran would seem to echo this. With regard to al-Rah.  mān, one example is the following verse:

44

  On Divine Unity Say: “If any men go astray, the Most Gracious One extends (the rope) to them, until, when they see the warning of Allah (being fulfilled) - either in punishment or in (the approach of ) the Hour,- they will at length realise who is worst in position, and (who) weakest in forces! 87

The epithet the Most Gracious One in this verse is a translation of the Divine name al-Rah.  mān, and the rah.  māniyya which flows from Him is seen to encompass those who are astray as well as those who are not. With regard to al-Rah.  īm, the Quran would seem at first glance to corroborate the traditional understanding of rah.  īmiyya as something which is reserved only for those who are deemed worthy of it, i.e. the true believers: He it is Who sends blessings on you, as do His angels, that He may bring you out from the depths of Darkness into Light: and He is Full of Mercy to the Believers.88

These particular Quranic verses thus appear to lend credence to the opinions of the traditional medieval theologians who distinguished between rah.  māniyya as the all-encompassing mercy that is bestowed upon believers and non-believers alike; and rah.  īmiyya as the inexhaustible mercy that is bestowed upon believers, primarily in the hereafter. Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalānī (d. 1448) sums up this position by saying that God’s rah.  māniyya is for the sake of this world, as His mercy does not differentiate between a believer and a non-believer, but rather includes all within its ambit, while on the Day of Judgment it is reserved – in the form of rah.  īmiyya - for the believers and the believers alone.89 The Nursian interpretation of the conceptual meaning of al-Rah.  mān and al-Rah.  īm comes across as a carefully nuanced version of the traditional reading. In his exegesis of the opening chapter of the Quran, the Fātīha, Nursi makes a case for al-Rah.  mān as a signifier of ‘great bounties’ (Turk. büyük nimetler) and al-Rah.  īm as a signifier of ‘small bounties’ (Turk. küçük nimetler). In the context of his general discourse on Divine mercy, ‘big’ and ‘small’ here may be interpreted as ‘general’ and ‘specific’, which is more in keeping with the connection Nursi makes between rah.  māniyya and wāh.  idiyya and between rah.  īmiyya and ah.  adiyya. Where Nursi’s interpretation departs from the traditional one is in his description of rah.  īmiyya as a manifestation of Divine oneness in which He “gathers together in every member of all animate species, and particularly man, specimens of all His bounties…and proclaims the special solicitude of His beauty to each individual, this without shattering the wholeness of the universe.” For Nursi, then, rah.  īmiyya is exclusive, but it is not exclusive to believers only; for Nursi it is exclusive in the sense that it manifests itself uniquely in every locus of manifestation, in accordance with the particular needs, capabilities, potentialities, constitution and situational context of that locus, whatever it may be. Divine rah.  māniyya is thus mercy in its general, all-encompassing sense while Divine rah.  īmiyya is individualized mercy, the result of Divine compassion which looks to every individual separately and in a unique manner. In Nursi’s treatment of the two modes of Divine mercy in this short passage we can see clear parallels with his exposition of the distinction between wāh.  idiyya and ah.  adiyya discussed earlier. The significance of the difference between ‘general mercy’ (rah.  māniyya ) and ‘individualised mercy’ (rah.  īmiyya) for Nursi is this: the manifestation of mercy known as rah.  māniyya is evidence that all things receive bounties in a general sense from the same Source. This can be understood from the sun allegory, where the reflection of light on a

45

The Qur’an Revealed  myriad surfaces points to the existence of a single sun. The manifestation of mercy known as rah.  īmiyya, on the other hand, is evidence that each thing is shown ‘special compassion’ by the Merciful, as though in a sense it were the only thing in existence. For example, the sun shines on all things equally, but affects each individual thing differently, in accordance with its needs, temperament and its individual capacity and degree of receptivity. Thus while rah.  māniyya, like wāh.  idiyya, shows that all things receive mercy from One rather than from many, rah.  īmiyya, like ah.  adiyya, shows that each creation is a unique ‘product’ of a unique Maker. Divine rah.  īmiyya, like Divine ah.  adiyya, signifies the uniqueness of God, and when reflected in beings it signifies the uniqueness of each of those beings. Thus each and every locus of manifestation – every being, in other words – is, like the One who creates it and all other beings, and Who showers mercy on it and all other recipients of mercy, unique. No two creatures in the phenomenal world are alike: as we saw earlier, Nursi talks about every created being in the universe bearing the sikka-i ah.  adiyya or ‘impress of Oneness’. The concept of rah.  īmiyya within rah.  māniyya, then, like the concept of Oneness within unity, serves two purposes. From the perspective of rah.  māniyya it nullifies the idea that there can be more than one Source of mercy; and from the perspective of rah.  īmiyya it dispels the notion that the single Source of mercy is the ‘mass producer’ of mercy which is dispensed without any thought for the individual needs of each created being. The concept of rah.  īmiyya within rah.  māniyya, then, secures both God’s singularity and His uniqueness, demonstrating that not only does He have no partners, but that He is constantly and continuously solicitous towards each and every individual creature in the cosmos with a ‘special compassion’, while at the same time bestowing mercy on the cosmos as a whole.

Unity from the perspective of compassionateness (rah.   īmiyya) and the bestowal of provision (razzāqiyya)

The dynamics of the rah.  māniyya - rah.  īmiyya relationship were explored in the previous passage. Here we shall concentrate only on Nursi’s exposition of rah.  īmiyya in the sense of bestowal of provision (razzāqiyya) in order to see how he adduces it as evidence of Divine unity. Compassionateness and the bestowal of provision comprise the giving, over the whole face of the globe, within the earth, in the air above it and the ocean around it, to all animate beings, especially those endowed with spirit, and among them especially the impotent, the weak and the young, of all of their necessary sustenance, be it material or immaterial, in the most solicitous manner, deriving it from dry and rude soil, from solid, bonelike dry pieces of wood, and in the case of milk, the most delicate of all forms of sustenance, from between blood and excretions, at the proper time, in orderly fashion, without any omission or confusion, in front of our eyes, by an unseen hand. Yes, the verse God is the Provider, the firm possessor of strength 90 restricts to God the task of sustaining and providing, and the verse There is no moving thing on earth but depends on God for its sustenance; He knows its resting-place and storage-place; all is in a book perspicuous 91 provides a dominical guarantee and pledge to furnish provision for all men

46

  On Divine Unity and animals. Similarly, the verse The beasts do not carry their sustenance; God sustains them and you, and He is All-Hearing, All-Knowing 92 establishes and proclaims that it is God Who guarantees and provides for all impotent, powerless, weak and wretched creatures that are unable to secure their own sustenance, in an unexpected fashion, indeed from the Unseen or even out of nothing; it is He for example Who provides for insects on the ocean bed and their young. This proclamation is directed in particular to those men who worship causes and are unaware that it is He Who bestows provision from behind the veil of causality. Numerous other verses of the Quran and innumerable pieces of cosmic evidence unanimously demonstrate that it is the compassionateness of a single Glorious Provider that nurtures all animate beings.93

The universality of provision, together with the special solicitousness that is shown to each creature individually, in accordance with its needs, is evidence for Nursi that the Merciful Provider of sustenance is one, and that He can have no partners in the act of provision. Nursi’s discourse is addressed here primarily to those who believe that material causes are somehow responsible for the provision of sustenance. But sustenance often comes to creatures “in an unexpected fashion…or even out of nothing”, Nursi asserts, from behind the veil of causation, which, since it is a contingent system itself, cannot in fact be responsible for the creation and maintenance of other contingent beings. Nursi places particular emphasis on the sustenance which comes to beings who have little or no means of seeking it themselves: Trees, for example, require a certain form of sustenance but have neither power nor will. They remain therefore in their places, trusting in God, and their provision comes hastening to them. So too the sustenance of infants flows to their mouths from wondrous small pumps, aided by the solicitude and tenderness of their mothers. Then when the infants acquire a little power and will, the milk ceases. These various instances clearly prove that licit sustenance is not proportionate to will and power, but comes in relation to weakness and impotence, which induce trust in God.94

Were the acquisition of sustenance to have a direct correlation to the will and power of the individual, it is clear, Nursi says, that a newborn baby would starve and a tree would wither. That under normal circumstances neither does so is evidence, he believes, that it is trust in God, induced by need and impotence, that assures the beneficence of Divine providing. Indeed, says Nursi, will, power and cleverness frequently incite men to greed and can even push the most learned people towards a form of beggary; by contrast, the trust of the “boorish, crude and common man” may often help him to attain great wealth.95 The proverb, “How many a learned man has striven in vain, and how many an ignoramus gained rich provision,” establishes that licit provision is not won by power and will, but by a mercy that finds working and striving acceptable; it is bestowed by a tenderness that takes pity on need.96

But it is not only man’s physical being which is in need of sustenance: his spirit, too, needs to be provided for.

47

The Qur’an Revealed  In the same way that a stomach requires sustenance, so too the subtle capacities and senses of man, his heart, spirit, intelligence, eye, ear and mouth also request their sustenance from the Compassionate Provider and gratefully receive it. To each of them, separately and in an appropriate form, is presented such provision from the treasury of mercy as will give them pleasure and make them rejoice. Indeed, the Compassionate Provider, in order to give to them provision in more generous measure, has created each of man’s subtle capacities —eye and ear, heart, imagination and intellect— in the form of a key to His treasury of mercy. For example, the eye is a key to the treasury containing such precious jewels as the fairness and beauty to be seen on the face of the universe, and the same holds true of all the others mentioned; they all benefit through faith.97

That each of man’s non-material faculties is provided for in accordance with its needs and capabilities is, for Nursi, evidence of a Compassionate Provider Who, as well as bestowing bounties on the cosmos as a whole, gives sustenance to each and every creature with ‘special solicitousness’ and in a manner unique to that being, as though it were the only thing in existence. The reality of provision, Nursi says, is actually one of the central pillars of dominical activity, and thus one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that the provider is One. The All-Powerful and Wise One Who created this cosmos created also life as a comprehensive summary of the cosmos, and concentrated all of His purposes and the manifestations of His Names therein. So too, within the realm of life he made of provision a comprehensive centre of activity and created within animate beings the taste for provision, thus causing animate beings to respond to His dominicality and love with a permanent and universal gratitude, thankfulness and worship that is one of the significant purposes and instances of wisdom inherent in the creation of the universe. Were there to be an eye capable of witnessing and comprehending the whole surface of the earth at one time, in order to perceive the beauties of the Names of Compassionate and Provider and the witness they bear to Divine unity, it would see what sweet beauty is contained in the tender and solicitous manifestation of the Compassionate Provider Who sends to the caravans of animals at the end of winter, when their provision is about to be exhausted, extremely delicious, abundant and varied foods and bounties, drawn exclusively from His unseen treasury of mercy, as succour from the unseen and Divine generosity, placed in the hands of plants, the crowns of trees, and the breasts of mothers. 98

Nursi ends his meditation on compassionate provision by again invoking the principle of unity within multiplicity. For if one were able to see the whole of the surface of the earth at one time, he would see that the making of a single apple, and the generous giving of it to a man as true sustenance and provision, can be accomplished only by a Being Who causes the seasons, the nights and the days to rotate, Who causes the globe to revolve like a cargo ship, and thus brings the fruits of the seasons within reach of those needy guests of the earth who stand waiting for them. For the stamp of its nature, the seal of wisdom, the imprint of eternal besoughtedness, the signet of mercy that is to be found on the surface of the apple, is to be found also on all apples and other fruits, plants and animals. Hence the true Master and Maker of the apple is bound to be the Glorious Sovereign, the Beauteous

48

  On Divine Unity Creator of all the inhabitants of the world, who are the peers, the congeners and the brothers of the apple; of the vast earth that is the garden of the apple; of the tree of the cosmos that is its factory; of the seasons that are its workshop; and of the spring and summer that are its place of maturing.99

Unity from the perspective of speed and facility of dominical action

The creation of beings, particularly those in the animal and plant kingdoms, takes place with the utmost speed, orderliness, ease and skill - an amazing feat, Nursi argues, given the fact that these beings exist in such profusion and with such complex interconnections. For Nursi, the rapidity and facility of this dominical action provide ample evidence that the power behind it belongs to a single Being only. Yes, to produce with extreme swiftness and in extreme abundance, most skilfully and artistically, with great ease and facility combined with the utmost care and orderliness, with great value and distinction despite abundance and intermingling, without any form of confusion or deficiency — this can be achieved only by a Unique Being Whose power is such that nothing appears difficult to it. For that power it is as easy to create stars as atoms, the greatest as the smallest, a whole species as a single member of a species, a sublime and comprehensive universal as a restricted and petty particular. It is as easy for Him to revivify and quicken the whole earth as it is to do the same with a tree. And it is as easy for Him to erect a tree as tall as a mountain as it is to produce a seed no bigger than a fingernail. All of these deeds He performs in front of our eyes.100

In Nursi’s opinion, the principle which has it that, as far as God’s creative act is concerned, the “greatest universal is like the smallest particular without the slightest difference between them”, is one of the most significant foundations of faith. The fact that God creates a whole apple orchard as easily as He creates a single apple, or a whole spring as easily as He creates an orchard, is a concomitant of the reality of Divine unity in multiplicity and the aggregation of all of the names, whether they signify His incomparability or His similarity. To imagine a God for whom the creation of one thing is more difficult than another is to imagine a God Who is not God at all, at least by Nursian reckoning. For if something be essential, its opposite cannot have access to the essence defined by that thing. For that would be equivalent to the union of opposites, which is logically impossible (muh.  āl ) Now with regard to this principle, since God’s power is related to His Essence (dhātī ) and is an essential concomitant (lāzım-i d.  arūrī ) of His Most Sacred Essence, impotence —the opposite of power— cannot in any way gain access to that All-Powerful Essence.101

Divine omnipotence, by definition, is absolute, and if omnipotence is a truly essential attribute of God, it cannot admit of its opposite without breaching the law of non-contradiction. Either God is in His essence all-powerful or He is not. Moreover there can be notion of differing degrees of Divine power: For the existence of degrees within a thing comes about through the intervention in it of its opposite. For example, strong and weak degrees of light result from the intervention

49

The Qur’an Revealed  of darkness; high and low degrees of heat proceed from the admixture of coldness; and greater and lesser amounts of strength are determined by the intervention and opposition of resistance. It is therefore impossible that degrees should exist in that power of the Divine Essence. He creates all things as if they were but a single thing. And since degrees do not exist in the power of the Divine Essence and it does not admit of weakness or deficiency, no obstacle can in any way obstruct it nor can the creation of anything cause it difficulty.102

Since Divine power is both essential and absolute, Nursi says, nothing is either easier or more difficult for God than anything else. Consequently, God creates the “supreme resurrection” (h.  ashr-i a‘z. am) as easily as He creates the spring; the spring as easily as He creates a single tree; and a single tree as easily as he creates a flower. Moreover, He creates a flower as artistically as a tree; a tree as miraculously as a spring; and a spring as comprehensively and wondrously as a resurrection. All of this He accomplishes in front of our eyes.103

Here we see that Nursi posits no qualitative difference between wholes and their parts, or between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic: God’s creation of the atom is as easy, artistic and miraculous as his creation of the entire universe, thanks to the dynamics of Divine unity and the existence at the level of absoluteness of all of the attributes of perfection in the Divine essence. Take away Divine unity, Nursi says, and creation becomes problematic, if not totally infeasible. For if there were no Divine unity, the making of a flower would be as difficult as a tree or even more difficult; the making of a tree would be as hard as a spring or even more difficult; and creation would even lose its value and artistic quality. An animate being that now takes a minute to produce would be produced with difficulty in one year, or maybe never at all.104

In the absence of Divine unity, the burden of creation – indeed, of self-creation – would fall on the shoulders of creatures which are contingent and thus existentially impotent. If creation were in any way possible for these creatures, they would be able to carry it out only with extreme difficulty, if at all. It is thus solely on account of [Divine Unity] that these fruits, flowers, trees and animals, which are extremely valuable despite their ubiquity and abundance, and extremely artistic despite the swiftness and ease of their fashioning, emerge in regular fashion onto the plain of being and assume their functions. Proclaiming God’s glory, they accomplish their duties and depart, leaving behind their seed in their stead.105

With regards to facility of action, Nursi compares the working of Divine power to that of the sun, which is able to reflect its light in one mirror with the same ease as in a thousand mirrors: Through the mystery of luminosity, transparency and obedience, just as through the manifestation of its essential power, a single sun reflects its light in a single mirror, so too, through the Divine command and due to the extensive activity of that unrestricted power, it can easily bestow the same reflection —together with its light and heat— on

50

  On Divine Unity innumerable mirrors, shining objects and droplets. Great and small are the same; there is no difference between them. The pre-eternal power of God’s essence is the most subtle and choicest of lights, the light of all lights; the quiddities, essences and inner dimensions of all things are luminous and lustrous as mirrors; all things, from the atom, the plant and the animate creature to the stars, the suns and the moons are extremely obedient and submissive to the command of that power of the Divine Essence and subordinate to the orders of that preeternal power. It is for all of these reasons entirely natural that innumerable things should be created with the same ease as a single thing and placed side by side with each other. No concern or task interferes with another. Great and small, many and few, particular and universal — all are the same for that power, for which nothing is difficult.106

Nursi gives a practical example of this facility by asking the reader to imagine two eggs of equal weight in the pans of a pair of weighing scales. Placing a single walnut in one of the pans would cause that pan to fall and the other to rise. Now imagine, he says, two mountains of equal weight and mass in the pans of an almighty pair of scales. Just as the single walnut would cause one pan to rise and the other to fall in the case of the eggs, so too would it cause one pan to rise and the other to fall in the case of the mountains.107 And so since there is to be found in God’s absolute, infinite, luminous, essential and eternal power a Divine justice and unending wisdom that is the origin, source, fundament and beginning of all order, regularity and equilibrium in creation; and since all things, particular and universal, small and great, are obedient to the command of that power and submissive to its workings — it follows that God causes the stars to revolve and to move, through the wisdom of His order, as easily as He rotates and moves the atoms. Similarly in spring, just as He brings to life a single fly with a single order, so too He bestows life with the same ease and the same command on the whole species of fly, as well as all the hosts of plants and animals, through the mystery of the wisdom and equilibrium inherent in His power, and then sends them forth onto the plain of life.108

The creative command that brings to life a single flower in springtime is the same command which summons into being the whole of spring itself. In this, Nursi says, lies the key to understanding not only the minor ‘resurrection’ which happens every year but also the ‘supreme resurrection’ which will bring back the whole of the cosmos to life after its death: With His creative command He brings the earth back to life. By the decree of There will be but a single cry, then they shall all be brought nigh unto Us; 109 that is, “all men and jinn, with a single cry and command shall be brought to Us and made present at the plain of resurrection.” Again, by His command The hour shall be but a blinking of the eye, or even closer; 110 that is, the bringing about of resurrection and the gathering that follows upon it shall take no longer than the opening and closing of an eye, or even less. Then there is the verse Your creation and resurrection is as a single soul,111 meaning the following: “O men! To create you and to bring you to life, to resurrect and gather you, is as easy for me as bringing one soul to life; it presents no problem for My power.” According to the inner sense of these three verses, God will bring all men and jinn, all animals, spirit beings and angels to the field of the Supreme Gathering and the great balance with a single command and with great ease. One concern does not interfere with another.112

51

The Qur’an Revealed 

Conclusion

Nursi’s exposition of Divine Unity is based on his uncompromisingly theocentric depiction of the phenomenal world as as a divinely-penned ‘book’, the kitāb-i kā’ināt or ‘book of creation’, which is comprised of ‘words’ or ‘verses’ which, once deconstructed, are revealed as nothing less than manifestations or individuations of the Divine attributes of perfection. Nursi’s view of all existence that is other-than-God is thus a wholly sacramental one, in which the transcendent sacred and the Source of all existence, i.e. the Divine, pervades all things. Of course, that God possesses a potentially infinite number of ‘beautiful names’, and not just the ninety-nine mentioned in the Prophetic Tradition, is nothing new in the theology of Islam. Emphasis on the centrality of the asmā al-h.  usnā is clearly Quranic in origin: the revelation is replete with verses or groups of verses which, having enumerated God’s bounties to man or described His workings in the cosmos, end invariably in the mention of one or more of the Divine attributes of perfection. Acknowledgement of the total dependence of the cosmos for its existence on the manifestation of those names appeared relatively early on in Muslim liturgy, particularly among the invocations of Muhammad and the prophetic household. In the Supplication of Kumayl, for example, taught by Imam Ali to one of his disciples, we read that ‘the beautiful names of God are the pillars which hold up all things’, while countless supplications attributed to the descendants of ‘Ali are constructed around the names and attributes of God.113 Later, of course, contemplation and the remembrance (dhikr) of the Divine names became a key feature of Sufi literature, with whole cosmologies being founded on the premise of ‘manifestation’ and the phenomenal world as a mirror held up to the reflection of the Divine.114 Nursi’s view of the cosmos as a multiplicity of loci for the ceaseless and ever-changing manifestation of the divine names and attributes of perfection is to an extent informed by the teachings of a number of major mystical thinkers, although the literary and didactic means he employs to articulate it are undoubtedly his own. In the Nursian scheme, the phenomenal world or ‘visible realm’ (‘ālam al-shahāda) is akin to a full-length looking-glass in which the ‘hidden treasure’ that is God manifests Himself in order to contemplate His own perfection.115 While at the level of Divine essence (dhāt), this act of contemplation is self-reflexive, at the level of Divine acts (af‘āl ), contemplation is mediated through the phenomenal world, at the pinnacle of which stands man. For Nursi, all created beings manifest God’s names to some degree: the whole of the cosmos becomes a hierophany, with each entity declaring the praises of God through its innate disposition or fit. ra. However, unlike Mircea Eliade’s perception of the hierophanic, which considers each of the constituent beings in the cosmos to be potentially indicative of the sacred, Nursi’s vision is one in which all things actually and actively reflect the Other, yet without detracting from their own distinct otherness.116 Nursi was acutely aware that the perception of the world as God’s personal mirror may lead some to dismiss the phenomenal world as unreal or imaginary and declare, along with some of the more extremist advocates of the concept of ‘unity of being’ (wahdat al-wujūd), that ‘all is God’. Owing to this awareness, Nursi is careful to draw clear lines of distinction between his own schema and that of the pantheists.117 Nursi’s own delicate balancing act, in which he juxtaposes the declaration of God’s incomparability (tanzīh) with that of His similarity (tashbīh), ensures on the one hand

52

  On Divine Unity that in His immanence, God is not conflated with His creation, and on the other hand that in His transcendence, He is not seen as an ‘absentee landlord’ who is unconcerned with the day-to-day workings of the cosmos.118 Nursi also devotes numerous sections of the Risale to detailed expositions of the ‘book of Creation’ – kitāb-i kā’ināt – in which all of God’s ‘words’ – the receptacles of His attributes – are inscribed for all to read. Man’s understanding of God is thus seen as experiential, for everyone is responsible for interpreting the same cosmic text, in which the attributes of perfection are made manifest for all to ponder. Yet while everyone is able to read, only some come to the desired conclusion. For Nursi, it is only by deliberating carefully upon the divine names made manifest in the phenomenal realm, with their seemingly infinite gradations and permutations that man, using his own receptivity to the attributes of perfection, is able to attain belief and fulfil his true destiny, which is to act as a conscious mirror for the reflection of the Creator: For the true meaning of human life is to act as a mirror to the manifestation of Divine oneness and the manifestation of the Eternally Besought One.119

For Nursi, the key to belief consists, inter alia, in deciphering the signs and symbols which exist in the horizons and within themselves 120 in order to solve the mystery of creation and reveal the true nature and value of mankind, which inhere in its status as vicegerent in potentia of God. By knowing what one is, and, more importantly, what one is not, one can, to paraphrase the words of the Prophetic Tradition, come to know one’s Lord.121 From the Nursian perspective, the attainment and strengthening of belief depend upon man’s ability to read the book of creation ‘in the name of God’ or bismillah – a phrase which he must internalise and assimilate if he is to fulfil the demands of the vicegerency entrusted to him: Yes, this phrase is a treasury so blessed that your infinite impotence and poverty bind you to an infinite power and mercy; it makes your impotence and poverty a most acceptable intercessor at the Court of One All-Powerful and Compassionate. The person who acts saying ‘In the Name of God’ resembles someone who enrols in the army. He acts in the name of the government; he has fear of no-one; he speaks, performs every matter, and withstands everything in the name of the law and the name of the government. 122

Nursi’s portrayal of the cosmos as a vast cosmic tome filled with signs (āyāt) for man to decipher mirrors the Quran’s own portrayal of itself as a book that is filled with verses (āyāt) which point to and describe its Author. The intertextuality of the ‘revealed Book’ that is the Quran and the ‘created book’ that is the cosmos was clearly not lost on Nursi, who on numerous occasions alludes to their complementary relationship.123 It is tempting, in the light of this near-conflation of the two divine texts, to read into what was reportedly the first verse of the Quran ever revealed to Muhammad – iqrā, or ‘read!’ - a second, subtle layer of meaning. For if we take a Nursian approach, we may without straining credulity suppose that what Muhammad was being asked to ‘read’ was not only the ‘words of God’ as revealed through the medium of the angel Gabriel, but also the words of God as embodied in the created realm. Thus in this command to ‘read’ one can also discern the command to ‘interpret’. Muhammad’s inability to comply with the divine command

53

The Qur’an Revealed  iqrā! has often been cited as proof of his illiteracy - that almost sacred unlettered state that has served to support his claim to prophethood. But Muhammad’s inability to comply with that command goes much deeper than the mere inability to read in the usual sense of the word. It is possible to understand the inability which Muhammad pleaded on Mount Hira as the inability to read in the interpretive sense of the word: what he lacked was a suitable epistemological framework with which to make sense of his own being and the cosmos around him. “How should I read?” – Muhammad’s alleged answer – thus now becomes ‘How should I interpret?’ The response to this is, of course, that Muhammad should read ‘In the Name of God’. “Read the cosmos,” God seems to be saying, “as a manifestation of the One Who created you; interpret it as an eternal and boundless book, filled with Signs which all point to Me.” For Nursi, bismillāh al-rah.  mān al-rah.  īm is much more than just a formulaic phrase of initiation that in Muslim tradition is prescribed before the performance of certain actions; rather, it indicates an epistemological framework for Quranic theology that was possibly in place from the very outset of the Prophetic mission, and which clearly informs most of the popular theology we encounter in the Risale.124 For Nursi, then, man is truly fulfilled only with the attainment of belief, and belief depends on the correct interpretation of the cosmic narrative: to read anything but the words of God inscribed on the pages of the universe, or to see anything but the signs of God in the mirror of created beings, is to betray one’s role as vicegerent and to fall short of what it means to be the conscious mirror in which the ‘hidden treasure’ that is God can be made manifest. The affirmation of Divine unity or tawh.  īd, which consists in the acknowledg­ment that all ‘signs’ point in one direction only, is one which separates the believer from the unbeliever, and is thus considered key to human salvation. As we shall see in Nursi’s discourse on belief and unbelief, to save himself from the wrath of God, man must first save himself from the tyranny of the self. And the tyranny of the self is what Nursi believes is given free reign when ‘partners’ are ascribed to God and He is not given His due.125 For Nursi, to declare that God is One is not some sterile exercise that is carried out in order to fulfil some dry theological imperative. On the contrary, to declare God ‘One’ is, in a sense, to declare the self ‘none’: it is to acknowledge one’s own existential impotence and to affirm the complete and utter dependence of all beings upon the Ground and Source of existence. To resist such an acknowledgment is to cling to the illusion that man actually has something in and of himself – an illusion which lies at the heart of all existential suffering and of which he is destined ultimately to be disabused. If the lion’s share of Nursian discourse is, like the Quran, given over to the issue of Divine unity, it is not primarily to protect the ‘dignity’ of God from those who would carve up his dominicality and distribute it among themselves and other creatures; rather, it is to protect man from the depredations of his own unregenerate self.

54

Chapter Two Existence and Entities Introduction

Having explored in the opening chapter some of Nursi’s arguments for the necessary existence (wujūb al-wujūd) and unity (wah.  da) of the Creator, we now shift the focus from God to that which is considered to be ‘other than God’, namely the cosmos and all of the entities which comprise it. Our objective is to understand how Nursi accounts for the phenomenon of being itself. Why do things exist rather than not exist? How are we to understand creation and the created realm, and what ontological status do creatures have? And how is the existence of the cosmos to whose being we attest related to the existence of the One purported to have brought it into being? Among the treatises which comprise the Risale-i Nur, none is dedicated solely to the question of existence and created beings, but there is enough material on the subject scattered throughout the various parts of his work for us to construct a reasonably accurate picture of how Nursi understood these issues.

If God exists, created beings must exist

As we have seen in Chapter One, in arguing for the necessary existence and unity of God, Nursi begins by looking first at the evidence ‘in the self and on the horizons’: by reading the vast ‘book of creation’, he says, one infers from the myriad signs and indications scattered therein that it has an Author. In short, the arguments marshalled by Nursi to support his notion of one, necessarily existing God move from effect to cause, from the notion of created beings to the notion of a Creator. To explain why beings other than God exist, however, Nursi moves on to what for him and other mystic-theologians like him must have appeared to be much firmer ground. For having established to his own satisfaction the necessary existence and unity of God, he is now able to argue from cause to effect, which he does when answering the question, “Why do things exist?” Since Almighty God exists, everything exists. And since they have a relation with Almighty God, each thing exists for all other things. For through the mystery of unity, through their

55

The Qur’an Revealed  relation with the Necessarily Existent One, all beings become connected with all other beings. This means that through the mystery of unity, every being that knows its relation with the Necessarily Existent One, or whose relation is known, becomes connected to all beings since they are connected to Him. This means that by virtue of that relation, all beings may manifest endless lights of existence. 1

The existence of God, then, entails not only the existence of things ‘other than God’ – the external world of beings of which we are part – but also their interconnectedness and interdependence. As Nursi points out, since they are all connected to God by virtue of the fact that they have been brought into being by Him, this shared connection implies that each thing is linked with all other things in one vast intricate web of existent beings. God, then, is the source or ground not only of the existence of things but also of their unity – an existence and unity which help all things to function collectively as a mirror in which the ‘endless lights of existence’ – Divine existence – may be made manifest. The existence of this metaphorical mirror serves two main, inextricably connected purposes: All living beings, for instance this adorned flower or that sweet-producing bee, are Divine odes full of meaning which innumerable conscious beings study in delight. They are precious miracles of power and proclamations of wisdom exhibiting their Maker’s art in captivating fashion to innumerable appreciative observers. While to appear before the gaze of the Glorious Creator, Who wishes to observe His art Himself, and look on the beauties of His creation and the loveliness of the manifestations of His Names, is another exceedingly elevated result of their creation.2

The manifestation of the Necessarily Existent by means of the existence of beings is not, as Nursi points out, only for the sake of making the created aware of their Creator: things exist, he says, also in order that God may observe Himself in them. If the cosmos is a vast conglomeration of mirrors in which created beings may observe that which has been manifested in themselves and in others, it is equally a full-length looking glass in which the Creator may observe His own artistry and admire the majesty of His own attributes of perfection. I was a Treasure but was not known. So I loved to be known, and I created the creatures and made Myself known to them. Then they came to know Me.3

The notion that God wishes to observe His own beauty, and that such observation appears in a sense to be dependent on the existence of ‘mirrors’ in the form of beings ‘other than God’, may sit uneasily with the concept of an utterly transcendent God Who is absolutely self-sufficient and impervious to deficit or need. Indeed, the idea that God’s ability to manifest Himself is predicable only on the existence of contingent beings may be one of the reasons why certain mystics were reluctant to attribute real existence to anything other than God. For them, to say that God manifests himself to ‘others’ is valid only if we understand the ‘others’ to be nothing but God himself. This was a belief held particularly by those who believed in the ‘unity of existence’ (wah.  dat al-wūjud) – a concept with which we shall deal later in this chapter. So how does Nursi deal with this apparent dilemma?

56

  Existence and Entities

Divine sovereignty necessitates the existence of ‘mirrors’

Nursi addresses the problem by affirming that the existence of things ‘other than God’ is the inevitable result of the existence of certain Divine names, and that those things are real and not the product of imagination. The sovereignty of divinity necessitates in actuality numerous sacred names like AllMerciful, Provider, Bestower, Creator, Doer, Munificent and Compassionate. And those true and actual names require actual mirrors. Now, since the followers of the Unity of Existence say: “There is no existent but He,” they downgrade the reality of beings to the level of imagination. Almighty God’s names of Necessary Existent, Existent, One and Single have true manifestations and spheres of application. For sure, if their mirrors and spheres of application were not real and were imaginary and non-existent, it would not harm them. And perhaps if there were no colour of existence in the mirror of true existence, they would be purer and more brilliant, but the manifestations of such names as Merciful, Provider, Subduer, Compeller and Creator would not be real, they would be hypothetical. However, those names are realities like the name of Existent, they cannot be shadows; they are essential, not secondary.4

As we have seen from Nursi’s ‘theology of the Names’ in Chapter One, the existence of very real attributes of perfection in creation – knowledge, wisdom, mercy, munificence, and so on – points, through their being contingent and ephemeral, to One in Whom such attributes exist in an absolute and eternal form. While the Divine Essence is in and of Itself unknowable, inasmuch as It has relations with the beings It creates, It is described by names, titles and attributes which denote very real qualities. Indeed, the divinity of God – His worthiness to be known, loved and worshipped – would be meaningless were it not a logical corollary of His existence that He possess numerous ‘sacred names’ - the reflections of which make up the verses of the ‘book of the cosmos’ that, when read properly, point to Him as their author. If, then, the divinity of God necessitates the existence of sacred names, the existence of sacred names requires a means whereby they are made manifest and find external expression. Created beings – all that is ‘other-than-God’ – are precisely those means. They are the mirrors, Nursi argues, in which the names of God are reflected. Moreover, these mirrors, he maintains, are real: they are not, as some mystics would have it, merely figments of the imagination. Here, Nursi mentions those whose belief in the doctrine known as ‘unity of existence’ leads them to maintain that God is the only Being that truly is, and that the existence of anything ‘other-than-God’ is a mere illusion. But for Nursi, to believe that created beings have no real existence is to strip the Divine names of their reality and render them hypothetical and, as a result, superfluous to requirement. If what we perceive to be created beings, reflecting very real attributes such as knowledge, wisdom, mercy and munificence, have no actual existence, what sense does it make to say that those attributes actually inhere in the Creator? If the creation is a phantasm, as Nursi seems to suggest certain mystics believe, why should the divinity of God require the existence of qualifying attributes at all? The ‘mirrors’, then, are real, and to deny them is, Nursi suggests, to deny the reality of the Divine Names. However, the fact that they are necessitated by the existence of the Divine Names does not mean that the existence of beings is necessary in the same way that

57

The Qur’an Revealed  God’s existence is necessary. Nursi has made it quite clear that he gives no credence to the notion that God and the created realm are one and the same. Now, having talked of creation in the sense of its being ‘necessary’, he is at pains to point out that the notion of ‘necessity’ when applied to contingent beings is utterly different from the notion of ‘necessity’ when applied to the Necessarily Existent One who brings those beings into existence. Again, he warns his readers not to fall into the trap of those who uphold the notion of ‘unity of existence’. If ‘mirrors’ are necessary, they are not necessary in any way that resembles His being necessary. In accordance with the sense of “There is nothing that resembles Him” 5 Almighty God has absolutely nothing that resembles Him. He is utterly beyond being comprehended in place or class and being divided into parts. His relation with beings is creativity. Beings are not imaginings or fancies as those who followed the way of the Unity of Existence said. Visible things too are Almighty God’s works. Everything is not “Him,” everything is “from Him.” For events cannot be pre-eternal.6

One of the consequences of the misinterpretation of the concept of ‘unity of existence’ is the conflation of the created with the Creator, which is why Nursi is at pains to highlight here the absolute incomparability of God with the created realm. While it is true, as Nursi himself asserts, that a God who ‘manifests’ Himself must of necessity have a ‘locus of manifestation’ with which to do so, this does not mean that He and the mirror into which His being is reflected are one and the same. Everything is not God, but it is from God. As Nursi points out, the relation between Creator and created is one of creativity. A builder who constructs a house in order to admire his own artistry is not identical in essence and existence to the end product; an artist who wishes to show his skills on canvas is not one and the same as the portrait he paints. The house is not the builder, but it is certainly from him: the relationship is one of creativity. The same applies to the artist and the portrait, and while the analogy – like all analogies – is not perfect, the same can be said to apply to God and the ‘visible things’ which are the results of His creative acts. Thus, as the Companions, the great interpreters of the law and Imams of the Family of the Prophet said: “The reality of things is constant.” Almighty God has a manifestation through all His names in actuality. Through His creativity, all things have an accidental existence. For sure, in relation to the Necessarily Existent’s existence, their existence is an extremely weak and unstable shadow, but it is not imagination, it is not fancy. Almighty God gives existence through His name of Creator and He continues that existence.7

Thus Divine sovereignty actually requires mirrors and therefore if there is a Creator, there must, as a consequence, be creation. This is not to say, of course, that the Creator is dependent upon His creation, but rather that creation is an inextricable feature of His Creatorship. The hand has a shadow, but is not dependent on it; rather, the shadow is dependent on the existence of the hand, while at the same time constituting an inextricable feature of the hand’s being. There will always be creation to act as a mirror, but this does not make any created being in particular indispensible. Indeed, it may be argued that there must always exist a full-length looking glass in which God ‘admires’ His own perfections, and that such a looking-glass has always existed. However, one should not infer from this that any of the

58

  Existence and Entities individual mirrors which make up the looking glass is in any sense co-eternal with God; the issue of the temporality or eternity of the creative acts of God will be dealt with a little later on.

The realities of all beings are based on the Divine Names

So as Nursi points out, while created beings are most certainly not God, they are in a very real sense from Him. They are from Him because, he explains, they are all dependent on His Names for their existence. According to the meaning of “And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise”, everything has numerous aspects that give onto God Almighty like windows. The realities of all beings and of the universe are based on the Divine Names. Each being’s reality is based on one Name or on many. The attributes of things and the arts they display are also based on and rely upon a Name. True natural science is based on the Name of All-Wise, true medicine on the Name of Healer, geometry on the Name of Determiner, and so on. In the same way that all the sciences are based on and come to an end in a Name, the realities of all arts and sciences, and of all human attainments, are based on the Divine Names. Indeed, one group of the most learned of the saints stated that the Divine Names constitute the true reality of things, while the essences of things are only shadows of that reality. They said too that even only apparently as many as twenty manifestations and impresses of the Divine Names may be seen on a single living creature.8

To claim that the reality (h.  aqīqa) of beings is ‘based on the Divine Names’ is another way of saying that what we see when we look at an existent being is nothing but a Divine attribute of perfection that has become manifest in the visible realm. In other words, the underlying reality of that which we perceive as a tree or a cat or a mountain is nothing but a Divine Name or a conglomeration of Divine names: its essence or quiddity (māhiyya) – its ‘treeness’, its ‘catness’, its ‘mountainness’ – is nothing but a shadowy form of that reality which we perceive conceptually in a manner which befits our finitude and creational limitations. It may be argued that an apple, for instance, has as its underlying reality the Divine Name ‘Provider’ or ‘Giver of Sustenance’; indeed, one may be able to discern many Divine Names at work in the ‘production’ of that entity we know as an apple. The apple is the corporeal entity which acts as a necessary veil for the functioning of Divine provision and sustaining: as we shall see in Chapters Three and Five, our being enmeshed in the web of apparent causality necessitates such veils, without which the very purpose of our creation could not be fulfilled. The quiddity or ‘thingness’ of the apple, then, is one issue; its actual existence and its underlying reality are another. In other words, the apple is a particular form of existence which reflects, in its own unique way, certain Names or permutations of Names belonging to God. The notion of its being a form – or, to be more precise, a level – of existence will be explored a little further on in this chapter. Before we do so, however, the fact that the apple is basically nothing more than an amalgamation of Divine names in a tangible form accessible to us as corporeal beings needs to be clarified, lest the notion that ‘Divine Names constitute the true reality’ of things be misconstrued as a conflation of the Creator with the created. Nursi is always careful to avoid what seems at times to be an inevitable slide into existential

59

The Qur’an Revealed  monism – wah.  dat al-wujūd – by driving home the importance of the sheer ‘otherness’ of God and the fact that He can in no way be compared with any of His created beings.

The absolute incomparability of God

It should be pointed out here that while the underlying reality of all beings is based on a Divine name or a number of Divine names, those beings as created entities bear no likeness to the One to Whom they are attributable. Nursi is careful to point out that while creation is from God, it is utterly other than Him and in no way His like, peer or equal. Thus in accordance with “And God’s is the highest similitude,” 9 the sacred Essence of the Necessarily Existent One is not of the same kind as contingent beings’ essences. All the truths of the universe are rays from the name of Truth, which is one of the Beautiful Names of His Essence. Since His sacred Essence is Necessarily Existent and completely detached from materiality and different from all other essences, it has no like, no equivalent, no equal.10

Nursi is reminding us here of that aspect of the Divine reality which is described by the term tanzīh, or absolute transcendence. To talk of God in terms of tanzīh is to assert His utter incomparability with any of the things He has created: it is to confirm that He cannot be described in terms of attributes which pertain to the objects of His creative act. For example, God has no shape or form; He is not limited to time and space; privation and evil do not impinge upon His being, and so on. To look at the Divine in the light of tanzīh is to recognise that God is in all respects absolute and thus, from this perspective, both utterly transcendent and therefore ultimately unknowable. Nothing is like Him or can be likened to Him. In contradistinction, to talk of God in terms of tashbīh is to assert that there are aspects of the Divine which, since they are similar to certain aspects of created beings, render God immanent and thus knowable. Qualities such as compassion, mercy, love, forgiveness and the like, all of which are to be found in created beings, are also predicated of God as Divine Names and Attributes of perfection, thus emphasising His closeness to the creation and opening the way for man to know, love and worship Him in accordance with his status as God’s vicegerent on earth. It is clear that when considered separately, transcendence and immanence appear to be diametrically opposed and hence mutually exclusive. However, both parts of the conceptpair of tanzīh /tashbīh are, if considered carefully, complementary and compatible, and must be asserted together if they are to make sense. For example, it is perfectly valid to describe a human being as knowing and God as knowing; indeed, as Nursi has demonstrated in Chapter One, it is the existence of attributes such as knowledge in the creation that point to their existence in the Creator. Our apprehension of many of God’s attributes, then, is possible only because of their similarity to qualities that we find in our own created selves. However, to avoid the trap of anthropomorphism, our assertion of God’s similarity – or closeness – to His creation has to be juxtaposed against an equally strong assertion of His transcendence or incomparability. In the case of knowing, it is true to say that man is knowing and God is knowing, but there is an important caveat. According to the verse There is nothing like Him,

60

  Existence and Entities human knowledge cannot be compared with that of God. Human knowledge is acquired gradually, while God’s knowledge is innate and timeless; human knowledge is limited, while God’s knowledge is absolute and all-encompassing; human knowledge is dependent on the exercise of certain faculties, while God’s knowledge is simple (basīt. ) and does not rely for its existence on extraneous causes, and so on. Thus when Nursi says that all created beings are based on the reality of the Divine Names, which suggests tashbīh or similarity, he is quick to point out that while this is indeed the case, one should not imagine that created beings are qualified by these names in the same way that God is. In other words, as soon as he asserts immanence, he qualifies it by asserting transcendence. One of the ways in which the absolute ‘otherness’ of God with respect to His creation may be understood is by contemplating the attribute of God which in one sense has primacy, and which possibly more than any other of His characteristics draws a clear dividing line between the Creator and the Created. For an established rule in the sciences of religion and philosophy is: “If a thing is not necessary, it may not come into existence [of itself ].” That is, there has to be a cause for a thing to come into existence. The cause necessarily requires the effect.11

The characteristic alluded to here is God’s ‘necessary existence’, which was discussed in some depth in Chapter One. Nursi defines ‘necessary’ with regard to existence in the context of its opposite, ‘contingency’. Since a being which comes into existence could conceivably have not existed, it is said to be ‘contingent’ .Its position with regard to existence and nonexistence is the same, and since it does not contain within itself the reason for its own existence, it depends on something other than itself to bring it into the realm of being. In short, it requires a cause. And since the cause of a contingent being cannot be other contingent beings – which cannot bestow existence on themselves, let alone on anything else – it must be a being whose existence is necessary. In other words, its cause must be a Being Who cannot not exist, and Who from the point of view of existence is absolutely self-sufficient. Thus ‘necessary being’ and ‘contingent being’ have absolutely different characteristics and cannot be compared: ‘necessary being’ is self-sufficient and self-subsistent, while ‘contingent being’ depends completely on ‘necessary being’. Another salient example of the absolute otherness of God with respect to the beings He creates is His eternity as opposed to their ephemerality. That is, His life is perpetual, it is pre-eternal and post-eternal. Death and evanescence, non-existence and cessation cannot befall Him. He who is pre-eternal must certainly be post-eternal. He who is sempiternal must certainly be eternally enduring. He who is necessarily existent must certainly be without beginning or end. How could nonexistence touch a life of which all existence, in all its varieties, is its shadow? Nonexistence and ephemerality and cessation could in no way encroach on a life through whose manifestation all lives continuously come into being, on which all the stable truths of the universe are dependent, and through which they subsist. Yes, one flash of that life’s manifestation accords a unity to the multiplicity of things, all of which are subject to decline and decease, and makes them display permanence; it saves them from dispersal, preserves their existence, manifests in them a sort of continuance. That is, life accords

61

The Qur’an Revealed  a unity to multiplicity; it makes it permanent. If life departs, the unity disintegrates, it ceases. Most certainly, ephemerality and transience cannot impinge on that necessary life, from a single manifestation of which all those innumerable flashes of life proceed.12

The ephemerality of created beings – the fact that they come into existence and then depart – is contrasted here with the eternality and immutability that are qualities concomitant of ‘necessary’ Being. The notions of non-existence, change, transformation, limitation, decline and demise – all of which characterise contingent beings – can have no meaning in the context of a Being upon Whose absolute existence all other things depend; were this not the case, that Being would also be contingent, thus precluding anything from existing. In emphasising the absolute incomparability of eternality with ephemerality, Nursi is again driving home the point that everything is not Him, it is from Him: just as change and non-existence cannot be predicated of the Creator, actual eternality cannot be predicated of created beings. Every being and event upon which external existence is bestowed by God has by default a beginning and thus cannot be pre-eternal. However, for Nursi, ephemerality does not mean simply that created beings come into existence, endure for a while and then depart, even if that is how it appears to us in the phenomenal world. He does indeed say that nothing but God can be eternal, but he goes one step further than this and, in keeping with his neo-Ash’arite theological grounding, asserts that in fact, nothing can last for more than the time it takes for it to enter the manifest realm and then depart again. Not only are created events and beings non-eternal, they cannot actually endure for more than an instant, as we shall see shortly when Nursi discusses the notion of ‘continuous creation’. Yet it is worth noting here that although Nursi dismisses the notion that anything but God can be eternal, nowhere in the Risale can we find any overt rejection of the idea that God’s creativity is eternal. The eternality of matter, the world or created beings is one thing, but the eternality of God’s role as creator is another entirely. Philosophers such as Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā argued along Neoplatonic lines that the perfection of God as creator of the cosmos is proof of its eternity, for to posit a God Who creates the world in time – which is the stance of the vast majority of the Muslim theologians – would be to detract from that perfection. The theologians for their part argue that since things are all subject to origination (h.  udūth), and since there can be no infinite regress, there must be a starting point for the creation of the cosmos as a whole: that starting point is the one at which God brought the world into existence from nothing.13 It has been argued that the Quran offers no clear support for either the philosophers or the theologians, and Said Nursi’s position appears to be similarly indefinite. Nursi’s belief in the perfection of God goes without saying, as do his repeated assertions that matter is not eternal. However, he is not one with the theologians in believing that things are created ‘out of nothing’; nor can we find any indication in the Risale that he was of the belief that the process of Divine creativity as a whole might ever have had a starting point.14 He may well have believed that this particular world had a beginning, but that is hardly the issue here: as we have already seen, every created being has a beginning, otherwise it would be necessary rather than contingent. It is quite possible to posit a beginning for every individual creature, yet still see God’s creative activity as eternal and without beginning. In other words, it is possible to hold the belief that every particular created being, including

62

  Existence and Entities the present world, is originated and has a beginning in time, while believing simultaneously that the whole series of such created beings has no beginning in time. This would mean that the objects of God’s creative activity form an infinite series that has neither beginning nor end – a notion that would appear to sit comfortably with both the cosmological precepts of the Quran and the philosophical theology of Nursi.15 God, then, has been creating for as long as He has been Creator, which, one presumes, is from pre-eternity; each created being, however, is contingent, originated in time, ephemeral and characterised by absolute existential impotence.

Creation as an embodiment of ‘relative truths’ : existence and non-existence

As Nursi points out, since God is the Necessary Existent, possessed of all of the attributes of perfection, ‘death and evanescence, non-existence and cessation’ can neither impinge on Him nor have any relation with Him. Furthermore, since God is absolutely good, Nursi asserts, ‘perfection, good and beauty are essentially what are intended in the universe.’ However, in order for created beings not only to exist as differentiated entities one from the other, but also to be able to discern that which is perfect, good and beautiful, there has to be an element of non-existence apparent in creation in order to make existence manifest. If the whole cosmos were coloured white, the colour ‘white’ would have no meaning; draw a black line across it, however, and the white immediately acquires meaning and becomes recognisable. So it is, Nursi assures us, with creation: in order for perfection, goodness and beauty to be comprehended, their opposites have to be juxtaposed against them. Hence the existence of defects, evil and ugliness – all of which, Nursi argues elsewhere, are examples of non-existence. Know that perfection, good and beauty are essen­tially what are intended in the universe, and are in the majority. Relatively, defects, evil and ugliness are in the minority, and are insignificant, secon­dary and trivial. Their Creator created them interspersed among good and perfection not for their own sakes, but as preliminaries and units of meas­urement for the appearance or existence of the relative truths of good and perfection. As for relative truths, they are the ties between beings and the threads with which their order is woven. They are the rays from which is reflected each unique being of the species in the universe. Relative truths are thousands of times more numerous than real truths, for if the real attrib­utes of a person were sevenfold, the relative truths would be seven hun­dred. A lesser evil may therefore be forgiven, approved even, for the sake of the greater good. For to abandon the greater good because it contains some lesser evil, is a greater evil. And in the view of wisdom, if the lesser evil encounters the greater evil, the lesser evil becomes a relative good, as has been established in principle in zakat and jihad, for example.16

The ‘relative truths’ of which Nursi speaks can be nothing but the names and attributes of God as they are made manifest in creation, in the ‘mirrors’ that are contingent beings. They are described as ‘relative’ because they are reflections of His names rather than the actual names themselves. God’s attributes are absolute, and so in order to be known they are in a sense refracted through the prism of contingent creation, which allows each attribute

63

The Qur’an Revealed  to seen in different degrees, modes and states. According to Nursi, it is the introduction of apparent evil into the equation – apparent because evil has no external existence and is merely the lack of good – that renders the good and the perfect visible, albeit in their relative forms. It is thus for the sake of the manifestation of ‘relative truths’ that the cosmos is an admixture of apparent polarities such as good and evil, light and darkness, and so on. As is well-known, “things are known through their opposites,” which means that the existence of a thing’s opposite causes the manifestation and existence of its relative truths. For example, if there were no ugliness and it did not permeate beauty, the existence of beauty with its infinite degrees would not be apparent.17

A co-requisite of the existence of opposites and apparent instances of privation and evil is the existence of change and transformation in the cosmos, which, on account of the continuous appearance of ever-fresh and ceaselessly changing permutations of manifested Names and attributes, is in constant flux. This too is a necessary condition for man, for without change and transformation, development – be it physical or spiritual – would be impossible, and the objective of his creation would remain unfulfilled. If the universe is studied carefully, it will be seen that within it are two elements that have spread everywhere and become rooted; with their traces and fruits like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, benefit and harm, perfection and defect, light and darkness, guidance and misguidance, light and fire, belief and unbelief, obedience and rebellion, and fear and love, opposites clash with one another in the universe. They are constantly manifested through change and transformation.18 Since pre-eternal wisdom and providence necessi­tated trial and examination, and the development of potentialities and unfolding of abilities, and the disclosure of the relative truths (al-h.  aqā’iq al-nisbiyya), which in the hereafter will be total truths (alh.  aqā’iq al-h.  aqīqiyya), and the existence of relative degrees and many instances of wisdom the human mind is powerless to perceive, the Maker (May His glory be exalted) made the natures and dispositions of things different, and combined harmful things with useful ones, and interspersed evils among good, and He brought together ugly things and beautiful. The Hand of Power kneaded together opposites and the universe became subject to the law of change, alternation, variation and development (al-takāmul ).19

Once man’s sojourn on earth is over, and his ‘trial’ has come to an end, these polarities which, when once blended together, formed the ‘place of examination’ that is the sensory world will be cleaved apart and made eternal, forming the basis of two diverging realms known as paradise and hell. Thus the Maker (May His glory be exalted) willed through His grace that when the arena of examination is closed, and the time of trial finished, and the harvest-time has come, He will purify the various opposites to make them eternal, and separate out the causes of change, and distinguish the matters of difference. Then Hell will be formed with its solid body, receiving the address of “So get you apart!” And Paradise will be mani­fested with its eternal, stable body and foundations. [This will be] in accor­dance with [the rule] “relations are essential for order,” [That is, there is no contrariety between the elements

64

  Existence and Entities and parts forming Paradise and Hell; there are only relations and bonds between them] and order is the cause of continuity.20

With the separation of polar opposites in the world to come, the notion of change and transformation as we understand it here will also cease to have meaning. The ‘relative truths’ will appear as ‘real truths’ and the true meanings of existent beings will be given a form that is, relative to the ceaseless flux of this present realm, stable and unchanging – relative in the sense that although time, motion and change will continue to occur in the world to come, they will not lead to decay, disintegration and annihilation. Moreover, through His perfect power, the Most High will give the dwell­ers of those two eternal abodes stable existences that will not be subject to dissolution or change, for change here, which leads to extinction, arises from the relative differences [that is, the imbalance] between what is formed and what dissolves. But the relative stability there [that is, the bal­ance] will permit change that will not lead to disintegration.21

Existence and entities have to be mixed with apparent evil in order to be made manifest. In other words, relative truths have to exist in order to make known the Real - hence the need for opposites in this world, for apparent imperfections and deficiencies. These opposites and apparent defects and lacks will be resolved in the hereafter, where relative truths will become real truths. Dissolution and change will disappear and permanence and stability will obtain. To sum up, Divine sovereignty necessitates the existence of the phenomenal world, both as a ‘mirror’ held up to the Divine Names and as an ‘arena of examination’ in which man is placed in order to attain knowledge, love and worship of God. Be it as a ‘mirror’ in which God ‘admires’ His own reflection, or a place of trial in which God can be comprehended by that which is other-than-God, the created world is by default shot through with instances and examples of apparent non-existence, which is the conceptual means whereby true existence is made manifest. Consequently, the world is a place in which the Absolute is refracted through the prism of the limited in order to demonstrate the ‘relative truths’ that are the infinite and ceaselessly unfolding impressions and manifestations of the Divine names and attributes.

The interplay of jalāl and jamāl

The existence of polar opposites in creation – good/bad, light/darkness, benefit/harm – not only enables us to perceive the relative truths that are created beings but also facilitates change, growth, transformation and the attainment of perfection. It is self-evident that without darkness, light would have no meaning; without the concept of harm, there could be no such thing as benefit, and so on. That things are revealed by their opposites is not exactly a novel idea: from pre-Socratic philosophers to medieval Muslim mystics, thinkers through the ages have posited the interplay of opposites as one of the foundational principles of change and diversity in the phenomenal world. However, why polar opposites – or, to put it more precisely, apparent polar opposites – should exist at all is rarely, if ever, clarified. Nursi explains the existence of these opposites by invoking the notion of duality which appears to exist in the Divine Names themselves. This is the duality of the jalālī and the jamālī attributes of God:

65

The Qur’an Revealed  The All-Glorious Creator of the universe has two sorts of Names, those pertaining to His Majesty (jalāl) and those pertaining to His Beauty (jamāl). Since these Names require the demonstration of their decrees through different manifestations, the Glorious Creator blended together opposites in the universe. Bringing them face to face, he gave them aggressive and defensive positions, in the form of a sort of wise and beneficial contest. Through making the opposites transgress one another’s bounds, He brought conflict and change into being, and made the universe subject to the law of change and transformation and the principles of progress and advancement. In human kind, the comprehensive fruit of the tree of creation, he made that law of contest in an even stranger form, and opening the door to striving, which would be the means of all human progress, He gave Satan’s party certain faculties with which to be able to challenge God’s party.22

We have already seen how Nursi emphasises that a balanced understanding of the reality of the Divine is dependent on asserting both His incomparability (tanzīh) and His similarity (tashbīh). There is a well established principle in both mystical and theological thought within the Muslim tradition that there are some Divine names which belong conceptually with the notion of incomparability, and other Divine names which are more readily identifiable with the notion of similarity. The names which are associated with incomparability are called the ‘names of Majesty’, or, as we shall refer to them, the jalālī names (from the word jalāl, meaning ‘glory’ or ‘majesty’); and the names associated with similarity are called the ‘names of Beauty’, or the jamālī names (from the word jamāl, meaning ‘beauty’).23 It is quite conceivable that all of the Divine names and attributes fall under one or the other of these two broad, qualitative ways of referring to the ways in which God manifests Himself in the realm of created being. It should be made clear, however, that this compartmentalisation is made only to facilitate a better understanding on our part, as limited beings, of the interaction – for want of a better term – between the Creator and the created. In fact, as far as they relate to Him as He is in and of Himself, the Divine names and attributes are indistinguishable one from the other: they can be considered distinct only when God is considered in relation to that which is other-than-God. The dichotomisation of the Divine names into the jalālī and the jamālī is therefore simply an aid to understanding, among other things, why what seem to be polar opposites exist in creation. As far as incomparability (tanzīh) is concerned, the qualities associated most readily with this aspect of the Divine reality are those such as majesty (jalāl), distance (bu‘d), magnificence (‘az.  ama), justice (‘adl), wrath (ghad.   ab), vengeance (intiqām) and the like. All of these qualities have corresponding ‘names’ by which God is known, e.g. alJalīl (the Majestic), al-Ba‘id (the Distant), al-‘Az.  īm (the Magnificent), and so on. With regard to similarity (tashbīh), the qualities usually associated with this aspect of God’s selfmanifestation include beauty (jamāl), nearness (qurb), grace (fad.   l), love (wudd), forbearance (h.  ilm), forgiveness (maghfira) and the like, together with all of the names which correspond to them. It is fair to say that the whole tapestry of cosmic life is woven from the strands of these apparently opposing qualities, which are, as least as far as their Source is concerned, in reality complementary opposites. If pressed, most would admit that the jamālī qualities are the ones that obviously have the greater appeal: not only do they seem inherently more agreeable on the whole, but in one sense they are also much easier for us to comprehend, given that they are associated with God’s similarity (tashbīh) to the created realm. Who

66

  Existence and Entities would not prefer love to wrath, or forgiveness to vengeance? And is not the closeness of a loving God more readily graspable than the distance of a God whose majesty is ultimately above all comprehension? As Nursi points out in the above passage, the existence of apparent opposites is responsible for, among other things, the concept of change and transformation; without these, human striving and spiritual progress would be impossible. Without apparent conflict, without change and failure and disappointment, success and salvation can have no meaning. Just as it is through falling that a child learns to walk, it is through the interplay of opposites that progress is secured. However, if there is to be a balanced understanding of God, both the jalālī and the jamālī have to be apprehended and appreciated together, as two halves of the same circle rather than as irreconcilable polar opposites. Both sets of qualities are designed to elicit from man responses which may appear to conflict superficially, but which need to be held in careful equilibrium if one is to make sense not only of creation but also of one’s role in it. To focus solely on the jalālī attributes, for example, would lead to an image of God so remote that He would be absolutely unknowable in every respect, and so full of might and wrath that the only possible response would be one of fear. Similarly, to consider the jamālī attributes alone would produce an equally skewed vision of God, restricting His qualities to only those fathomable by human beings and thus leading to a wholly anthropomorphic vision of the Divine. To embrace both the jalālī and the jamālī is to aim for a balanced – and thus Quranically acceptable – understanding of God, asserting His similarity while at the same time acknowledging His utter transcendence. Such a balance is indispensible if true submission and a real sense of worshipfulness is to be achieved.24 Only then, for example, can the fear which is elicited by contemplating Divine wrath be tempered by the hope that is generated by deliberating upon Divine forgiveness. To nurture in one’s own being both fear and awe is, Nursi would argue, to tread the middle path or the s.irāt.  al-mustaqīm, which is the only path that leads to ultimate felicity.25 Yet there is more in Nursi’s brief exposition of the jamālī / jalālī dichotomy than simply the acknowledgment of its centrality to the notion of change as a catalyst for human spiritual progress. Nursi talks of God’s ‘blending’ together opposites in the universe, about ‘bringing them face to face’ and giving them ‘aggressive and defensive positions, in the form of a sort of wise and beneficial contest’. He also says that God makes these opposites ‘transgress one another’s bounds’, thus bringing into existence conflict and change. What implications does this have for the entities which we experience ‘out there’ in the phenomenal world? When God ‘blends’ together opposites, what is it exactly that he is ‘blending’? If, as Nursi has pointed out earlier, things can be known only by their opposites, does this imply that the cosmos comes into being through the blending of existence and non-existence? Superficially, that would seem to be what one is able to infer from Nursi’s explanation. But in reality, non-existence has no instantiation in reality and therefore cannot be ‘blended’ with anything: as its name suggests, non-existence does not exist, and therefore cannot in any meaningful sense of the word be classed as the ‘opposite’ of existence. To say that existence can be made manifest only if it is blended with its opposite is tantamount to saying that God, Who is, as Nursi points out, pure existence, can manifest Himself only by means of His opposite. The problem with this, of course, is that God has no opposite.

67

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi’s explanation of how change and transformation are effected through the ‘blending’ of opposites thus seems to be positing not the commingling of existence with nonexistence but, rather, a kind of ‘self-limitation’ effected by God in which some of His names are allowed to impinge on or overshadow others in order to bring about differentiation, and with it, change and transformation. The famous Tradition in which God says, “Verily, My Mercy outstrips My Wrath” would tend to support the notion that some of the Divine names are given more expression than others, thus bringing about an apparent hierarchization of Divine attributes which, on account of the gradation of existence that would occur as a result, should help us to understand why there may well be no need to invoke the notion of non-existence as an explanation of why there is multiplicity and differentiation in the world.

Nursi and the question of gradation of existence

While he explains the diversity of created beings and the relationship between the unity of God and the multiplicity of His manifestations by invoking both the principle of the interplay of complementary polarities and the notion of the apparent commingling of existence with non-existence, Nursi also explains the cosmos in hierarchical terms as something which not only contains a number of different worlds but which is also characterised by different levels or degrees of existence. The degrees of existence are different. And the worlds of existence are all different. Because they are all different, a particle from a level of existence that is deeply rooted in existence is as great as a mountain from a less substantial level; it contains the mountain. For example, the faculty of memory, which is the size of a mustard-seed in a head from the Manifest World, takes on an existence the size of a library from the World of Meaning. And a mirror the size of a fingernail from the external world encompasses a mighty city from the level of the World of Similitudes. If the memory and the mirror from the external world had possessed consciousness and creative power, they would have been able to bring about endless transformations and activity in the Worlds of Meaning and Similitudes through the power of their minute existences in the external world. That is to say, when existence is firmly established, power increases; what is only a little becomes much. Especially if having acquired complete stability existence is disengaged and detached from materiality and is not restricted, only a partial manifestation of it will be able to transform many worlds of other less substantial levels of existence. Thus in accordance with And God’s is the highest similitude 26 the universe’s Glorious Maker is Necessarily Existent. That is, His existence is essential, it is pre-eternal and posteternal, its non-existence is impossible, its cessation is impossible; it is the most firmly rooted, the most sound, the strongest and the most perfect of the levels of existence. In relation to His existence, the other levels of existence are like extremely pale shadows. The degree of Necessary Existence is so stable and real, and contingent existence is so insubstantial and pale, that many of those who have investigated creation, such as Muhyi al-Din al-‘Arabi, have relegated the other levels of existence to the level of delusion and imagination; they said: “There is no existent save Him.” That is, things should not be ascribed existence relatively to the Necessary Existence. They asserted that they do not deserve to be called existent.27

68

  Existence and Entities Nursi talks about ‘degrees of existence (vücut mertebeleri /marātib al-wujūd) and ‘worlds of existence’ (vücut âlemleri / ‘awālim al-wujūd), and, even though at times he appears, like other scholars, to conflate the two, I believe it is important that we draw a clear distinction between them; I also believe that the distinction was not one of which he was unaware, and that even though he used two easily confusable terms in close proximity, his intention was that they be understood as referring to two different aspects of reality. By ‘worlds of existence’ he appears to be referring to the plurality of realms of being which comprise the ‘visible world’ (‘alam al-shahāda) – the world ‘out there’, in concreto, that is accessible to human sense perception – and the various worlds which make up the ‘world of the unseen’ (‘alam al-ghayb), to which we are connected but which is not accessible to our corporeal senses. While the existence of this plurality of worlds – one ‘seen’, the others ‘unseen’ – is clearly key to Quranic cosmology, it need not detain us at this juncture: a detailed exploration of these worlds – and in particular the ‘worlds of the unseen’ – will be made at the end of this chapter. What is of immediate interest here is Nursi’s use of the terms ‘degrees’ or ‘levels’ (t. abaqāt) of existence, particularly as they appear in the concluding paragraph above. It is of interest because in one sense it serves to circumvent the problem of having to factor non-existence into the equation when describing precisely what it is that allows existence to become manifest. As such, it bears a certain similarity to aspects of the theory of ‘gradation of existence’ (tashkīk al-wujūd) as expounded by, among others, Mulla S. adrā Shīrāzī and Shah Walī Allāh Dihlawī.28 Whether Nursi was conversant with their works is impossible to say, although given his voracious appetite for learning as a young student, he may well have come across a number of theories of existence during his study of Muslim philosophy. It is more likely, of course, that he would have encountered similar ideas in the teachings of the great Sufi masters, with whose approach to the issue he would have been more than familiar.29 A primitive form of the concept of gradation or tashkīk can be found in the teachings of the Greek philosophers; the notion of the ‘chain of being’ can be found in the works of Aristotle, and has played a not insignificant role in the development of Western philosophical and theological thought. Medieval thinkers in the Western world looked upon a universe in which there was a rigid hierarchy of beings, from inanimate minerals up through the vegetable and animal kingdoms, through the realms of man and the angels and finally ending with God himself. The Aristotelian notion of the hierarchy of being was later developed further by Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Sina, who spoke of ‘stages’ or ‘degrees’ of existence (marātib al-wujūd), a concept that was in many ways central to his whole philosophical endeavour. Mullā S. adrā Shīrāzī took the concept and developed it in his own way, largely in keeping with his theory of the principiality of existence (‘as.ālat al-wujūd).30 According to him, not only is there a gradation of entities which comprise a vast cosmic hierarchy, but the actual existence (wujūd) of each entity is nothing but a grade – or what Nursi has called a ‘level’ – of the single reality of existence whose source is the Necessary Being. God as Being is thus like the sun and all of the things upon which He bestows existence are like points spread out across each of the rays of the sun. What distinguishes one point from the other is its particular degree of intensity. The vast panoply of created beings which comprises the created

69

The Qur’an Revealed  realm is thus nothing but a single reality – existence – that is seen in all of its different grades and levels. Gradation thus accounts for differentiation: the cosmos is simply the gradation of existence in an infinite number of degrees of intensity, stretching from ‘the Throne of God to the carpet of earth beneath man’s feet’, to use the traditional expression.31 The essences of things – their ‘whatness’ – remains stable and is not subject to gradation: it is existence itself which is graded. Thus an angel, for example, is a particular ‘grade’ or ‘level’ of existence, as is an apple or a speck of dust. What they all share is existence, only in different degrees of intensity. Shah Walī Allāh’s theory is not dissimilar. For him, existence – as far as created beings is concerned – comprises existence (wujūd) and essence (māhiyya) and has many different grades, stages and modes. The very fact that there is individuation and differentiation for him proves that there is gradation (tashkīk) of existence itself, and that it is this gradation that in turn underpins multiplicity or ‘manyness’. He likens the relationship between the various grades of being to the relationship which exists between the lights of various lamps in a room: at first glance the light of the lamps appears as one and the lamps themselves are difficult to differentiate from each other. In reality, however, they are distinguishable from one another because of the number of the lamps and the relative intensity of the light which comes from each of them.32 As for the room itself, there is no darkness, only light – albeit in different receptacles and at different intensities. While the room cannot be said to be absolutely bright, any darkness that appears to obtain is simply a result of the differing degrees of light: there is certainly no actual commingling of light and darkness, which are opposites in name alone. Unlike S. adrā and Shāh Walī Allāh, Nursi does not offer us an elaborate theory of graded existence, but from his brief treatment of the subject it would appear that he is pointing towards the same conclusion: Divine existence does not only have primacy and eternality, it is the ‘most perfect of the levels of existence’. The question arises, of course, whether by ‘most perfect’ Nursi is talking about one single reality that has several levels, or about two different modes of existence – one which is pure Being and the other which is the reflection of Being, or ‘dependent existence’. From what we know of Nursi and the general theological positions he takes, it would perhaps be counter-intuitive to suppose that his stance on existence is identical to that of either of the scholars mentioned. However, as we shall see in his approach to the issue of wah.  dat al-wujūd, Nursi has a way of surprising his readers when they least expect it.

Existence is pure good

The ‘relative truths’ of which created beings are embodiments, and the appearance of which is made possible only by the commingling of existence with apparent non-existence, are by default good, even though as truths they are only ‘relative truths’. They are relative in the sense that they comprise numerous degrees or levels of existence, the gradation of which is facilitated by the interspersion of numerous degrees of apparent non-existence, in the same way that the different degrees of light are made visible only by darkness, which is a privation of light. Light and darkness are not two different things: darkness is merely a lack of light, which self-evidently has existential primacy. The greater the lack, the lesser the light; the lesser the lack, the greater the intensity of light.

70

  Existence and Entities Similarly, although existence appears to be commingled with non-existence, they are not two things which have been joined together. Non-existence is precisely what it says it is: a lack of existence. And as such, it can have no external reality. That which has primacy is existence, and, like light, it appears in degrees of intensity. Thus whatever we see is actually existence, and existence is, Nursi avers, pure good. The facts that all virtues and perfections return to existence and that the basis of all rebellion, calamities and defects is non-existence are a proof that existence is pure good and non-existence is pure evil. Since non-existence is pure evil, circumstances that either result in non-existence or give an inkling of it also comprise evil. Therefore life, the most brilliant light of existence, proceeding through different circumstances, finds strength; it encounters varying situations and is purified; it takes on numerous qualities and produces the desired results, and enters many stages and displays comprehensively the impresses of the Bestower of Life’s Names. It is on account of this fact that certain things happen to living creatures in the form of griefs, calamities, difficulties and tribulations, whereby the lights of existence are renewed in their lives and the darkness of non-existence draws distant and their lives are purified. For arrest, repose, silence, idleness, rest and monotony are all, both in quality and as conditions, non-existence. Even the greatest pleasure is reduced to nothing by monotony.33

If the created world is a manifestation of the Divine attributes of perfection, all that is created and existent must, because of its Source, be inherently good. Non-existence – which, quite literally, means the lack of existence – is evil inasmuch as it is privation. Injustice, for example, is the lack of justice; cruelty is the lack of compassion; folly is the lack of wisdom, and so on. As such, these absences have no external existence: they are not created things that can be touched or measured. To say, as Nursi does, that non-existence is pure evil may appear misleading, given the fact that non-existence is exactly what it says it is. Similarly, to say that evil is equal to non-existence – or that it has no external existence – may also give the impression that there is no such category as evil at all. However, evil does have a reality, even if it has no external existence. To behave unjustly is evil not because of the act which results from it, but from the intention which brings it about. A detailed exploration of the difference between intention and action with regard to evil is beyond the scope of this present discussion and will be given a fuller treatment in Chapter Twelve on the question of ‘Divine determining’ and freewill. Suffice here to say that as far as existence is concerned, the interspersion of non-existence in the creation, which occurs in order to make existence known in its multifarious modes and degrees, does not involve the creation of evil: it merely signifies the appearance of varying degrees of privation, which have no external existence at all, although they do have a comprehensible conceptual reality.

Nursi on the ‘unity of existence’ (wah.  dat al-wujūd) and the ‘unity of witnessing’ (wah.  dat al-shuhūd)

Nursi’s discourse on the meaning of existence is, as we have seen earlier, punctuated by frequent references to the doctrine of wah.  dat al-wujūd. Indeed, it would probably be impossible to discuss any contemporary Muslim theories of existence without exploring

71

The Qur’an Revealed  what is arguably one of the most controversial and contested subjects in philosophical theology and mysticism, namely the notion of the ‘unity of existence’. It is doubly important here because, at first glance at least, Nursi’s exposition of what he calls the ‘levels of existence’ hints at something that appears tantalizingly close to the notion of the ‘unity of existence’ – the teaching of which he opposed robustly in the Risale-i Nur. The concept of wah.  dat al-wujūd is held traditionally to have originated with Ibn al‘Arabī, although no actual mention of the term can be found in his works.34 The ascription to him of this most contested of mystic-philosophical doctrines is not completely erroneous, for it is clear that he was a believer in the ‘unity of existence’; however, the fact that so much criticism has been targeted at him for what is seen in some orthodox quarters as a doctrine of heresy is down not so much to what he himself said on the subject as to the way his teachings were interpreted by others. Before we explore the subject further, it is perhaps fitting to point out here that the ‘unity of existence’ may be a somewhat misleading term to use as a description of Ibn alArabi’s central thesis, for this somehow suggests that he overlooked the notion of multiplicity or ‘manyness’, which is most certainly not the case.35 It may also be a good idea to use the Arabic wujūd rather than its usual English translation, ‘existence’, on account of the fact that, as certain scholars have pointed out, existence is often understood and used rather differently by Western thinkers.36 For Ibn al-‘Arabī, the word wujūd is a single reality which manifests itself in different modes. The primary meaning of wujūd is the very essence of the Necessary Being Itself – the only thing that is real in every sense of the word. The secondary meaning of wujūd is the existence of all that is ‘other-than-God’: as such, it can refer either to the cosmos as a whole or each of the individual entities that comprise it. In short, as well as designating God, it is also used to designate existent beings other than Him. When wujūd is used in the context of God, it refers to that ultimately unfathomable source or ground of all that exists, in whichever particular way or mode it exists. Ibn al‘Arabī, like other theosophers, often uses the word as though it were synonymous with ‘light’. To say that wujūd – the reality of God Himself – is the ground of all that exists in creation is no different, Ibn al-‘Arabī would say, from asserting, as the Quran does, that God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.37 For just as light is a single reality through which all colours, objects and forms are perceived, wujūd is that single reality through which all created entities are made manifest in all their endlessly varying modes and levels of existence. Light is invisible; it is only when it is contrasted with darkness that we can perceive it; similarly, wujūd is invisible, and it is rendered perceptible only by the coming into external existence of contingent beings. The oneness of wujud – the fact that wujūd is a single reality – does not preclude the notion of multiplicity, of ‘manyness’, even though, as Ibn al-‘Arabī asserts, wujūd is indivisible. Ibn al-‘Arabī writes extensively on multiplicity – albeit in the context of Divine unity – and to claim, as many of his detractors have, that he glosses over the subject or dismisses it completely is to malign both him and his work. Having said that, while Ibn al-‘Arabī does indeed affirm the reality of multiplicity, he does not say that it exists in the same way that God exists; after all, there is only one real existence, and that is wujūd, or the single reality that is God. The example of light, adduced

72

  Existence and Entities earlier, may facilitate our understanding here. While it is self-evident that the colours blue and yellow exist, it would be wrong to say that blue and yellow are things which have independent existence. For like all colours, blue and yellow exist through the medium of light: as far as their underlying substance is concerned, they are one, but as far as their specific realities – their blueness and their yellowness – are concerned, they are two. Similarly, while the cosmos can be said to exist through the wujūd of God, the individual entities which make up the cosmos have their own specific properties. An apple is an apple, an orange is an orange and both are ‘other-than-God’. However, as far as their underlying reality – existence – is concerned, they are one. For without God, who is real wujūd, the apple and orange could not exist. From this Ibn al-‘Arabī concludes that every entity we perceive in the cosmos is non-existent in and of itself but existent in some sense through the wujūd of God, just as blue and yellow are non-existent in themselves but existent through the medium of the single reality we call light. What, then, do we get if we subtract the wujūd from entities? What is a rock, a flower, or a fish in and of itself without any reference to wujūd? Ibn al-Arabi argues that no entity other than God has – or is – wujūd in the real sense of the word. He maintains that whether or not a thing actually comes to exist in the phenomenal world, its reality or essence stays the same. In other words, when an entity emerges into the phenomenal world, it reflects a kind of ‘borrowed’ existence which it has to surrender to God when it eventually leaves the phenomenal world, as when a human being dies or when a lump of coal is set alight and reduced to ashes.38 In and of itself, it has never possessed existence: all that it is, and has, is a ‘borrowed’ existence, and therefore it cannot be said in and of itself to cease existing when it disappears. According to Ibn al-‘Arabī, the entity throughout its apparent existence in the phenomenal world remains in its original state of ‘immutability’ (thubūt) in non-existence. It is here that Ibn al-‘Arabī’s discourse becomes somewhat opaque, and it is easy to see why some dismissed it as so much elaborate sophistry. What, exactly, does it mean to say that a non-existent thing is immutable? Ibn al-‘Arabī here invokes the notion of ‘fixed entities’ (al-a‘yān al-thābita), which are the realities of things as they are in God’s knowledge. Owing to His omniscience, God knows all things ‘before’ He creates them; He knows them in all the characteristics and modes of being that they will display during their stay in the phenomenal world. These realities are fixed forever in God’s knowledge, which is why Ibn al-Arabi sometimes calls them the ‘nonexistent objects of knowledge’ (al-ma‘lūmāt al-m‘adūmāt). We may possibly understand them as the possibilities which God, through His creative act, actualizes and displays in the external world. Their being multiple does not impinge on the unity of wujūd any more than the multiplicity of thoughts does not mean that we have more than one mind, or that our mind has a multiplicity of parts.39 So much for the reality of beings in ‘non-existence’, in the knowledge of God before they appear to enter the phenomenal world. What is the ontological status of the entities that we see in the cosmos and describe as existing? Ibn al-‘Arabī claims that we do not actually see ‘existent entities’ in the cosmos, and that the expression ‘existent entities’ is merely a figurative expression.40 What we actually see in the ‘world out there’, he says, is not the assemblage of entities that we call the cosmos but, rather, wujūd itself. Indeed, how could we see things which do not possess existence in and of themselves? What we see, according to Ibn al-‘Arabī, is the Necessary Being from the perspective of His Name ‘the Outward’ –

73

The Qur’an Revealed  as opposed to His Name ‘the Inward’. These names – the ‘Outward’ and ‘the Inward’ – are among those mentioned by the Quran: He is the First (al-awwal) and the Last (al-ākhir), and the Outward (al-z.  āhir) and the Inward (al-bāt. in); and He is Knower of all things.41

Now because God as ‘the Inward’ is by definition unknowable, wujūd is made manifest through the name al-z.  āhir or ‘the Outward’. As ‘the Outward’, God ‘displays’ Himself in the ‘locus of manifestation’ (maz. har) which is the phenomenal world. And within that world there are a myriad lesser loci of manifestation, each one of which is an entity in the ‘world out there’. These loci of manifestation are, as we have already seen, non-existent in and of themselves, owing to the fact that real existence belongs to God alone. Thus, argues, Ibn al-‘Arabī, we perceive not the entities themselves but rather wujūd that is in a sense ‘coloured’ by the properties or ‘effects’ of the entities, which themselves remain fixed in immutable non-existence in Divine knowledge.42 Again, it is to the light analogy which we must turn for clarification here. According to Ibn al-‘Arabī, our perception of entities in wujūd is similar to our perception of light when passed through a prism: although we see different colours, in fact we are seeing only light, because only light exists in reality. The loci of manifestation of God’s names are multiple because of the multiplicity of qualities, properties and effects that they exhibit, but they are at the same time one because of the oneness of wujūd which is made manifest through them. Consequently, God is one with the wujūd of things but not with the things themselves.43 So although things are in and of themselves non-existent, we perceive them in the phenomenal world because wujūd is in some sense bestowed upon them. This bestowal allows us to talk about their existing, although only because wujūd is manifest in and through them. God brings all things from their state of non-existence in His knowledge to a state of external existence in the phenomenal world, where they are able to experience not only their own realities but also the reality of the truly Real, i.e. God. Ibn al-‘Arabī often compares this process to the breath which is emitted when someone breathes; indeed, he says that the ‘All-Merciful Breath’ (nafas al-rah.  mān) is that which sustains all things: through this ‘Divine breath’, all ‘immutable’ entities, fixed in a non-existent state within Divine knowledge, become ‘existent’ entities in the phenomenal world, while still maintaining their ‘fixity’ in Divine knowledge and without gaining real existence.44 Ibn al-‘Arabī also refers to the entities as ‘words’ spoken by God: when God ‘breathes’, He speaks, and when He speaks, the whole phenomenal world is brought into being and continuously re-created. This process is continuous because there is, as the Quran attests, no end to the ‘words’ of God and thus no point at which He ceases to speak. Since God’s ‘words’ are individuated and completely distinct realities, their multiplicity is no illusion. However, it is the ‘Divine breath’ which is the single reality underlying those words. Words depend absolutely on the breath but the breath has no need for words. But if the ‘Divine breath’ gives rise to ‘words’, and those words are the entities we perceive in the cosmos, does this not imply that something that is Divine has somehow detached itself conceptually from God and taken on contingent form? If the ‘words’ are from the ‘Divine breath’, does that not mean that the ‘Divine breath’ is also something

74

  Existence and Entities which issues forth from God and is in a sense separate from Him? This is not a question to which Ibn al-‘Arabī is able to give a satisfying answer. The same applies when we think of human breath. From one perspective, a person’s breath is not identical with his self: one is able to make a conceptual distinction between a person and a person’s breath. Yet take away that breath and the person becomes a corpse. From one perspective, then, that person and his breath are inseparable. Ibn al-‘Arabī ultimately has to bite the bullet and say exactly the same with regard to God: the ‘Divine breath’ is the same as God and yet from another perspective it is different. Consequently, the ‘words’ which issue forth from that breath are from one perspective the same as the breath itself, and from another perspective they are different. Thus as far as existence is concerned, from one perspective the entities are not absolutely identical with God, but from another perspective they are not absolutely different either. This is arguably as far as Ibn al-‘Arabī takes us before leaving us to conclude that the precise nature of the relationship between wujūd and the creation – between existence and entities – can never be known for sure. As for the doctrine of wah.  dat al-shuhūd or ‘unity of witnessing’, it is usually posited as a kind of counter-theory to wah. dat al-wujūd - one that was in a sense designed to address its shortcomings and function as a kind of corrective. Sirhindi’s main objection to wah. dat al-wujūd appears to have been not so much the doctrine itself as the fact that many people were, he said, using the doctrine as a pretext to avoid carrying out the ordinances of the revealed law or sharī‘a: it was clear, he believed, that ‘unity of oneness’ tended to promote antinomianism, and on those grounds alone it was deemed unfit for general consumption. Sirhindi’s own acquaintance with the works of Ibn al-‘Arabī seems slight, and one thus presumes that what he knew of the doctrine was for the most part that which he had read in the works of its detractors. Sirhindi claimed that in order for it to make sense and thus be correct, the ‘unity of existence’ had to be seen as really indicating the ‘unity of witnessing’. The reason for this was that if some people see the existence of God and the world as being identical, it is down to their perception – i.e. their witnessing – and not the actual reality of things. Like Ibn Taymiyya before him, Sirhindi thought that people were going astray because they understood the ‘unity of existence’ to mean the absolute identicality and indistinguishability of God and His creation, which is really something quite different from what Ibn al-‘Arabī was saying.45 That Sirhindi’s understanding of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s conception of wah. dat al-wujūd seems at odds with what Ibn al-‘Arabī actually wrote on the subject becomes clear when one unpacks specific criticisms. For example, Sirhindi believed that Ibn Al-‘Arabī had ‘overlooked the real evil, badness and corruption of the essences of the contingents’, regarding them instead as ‘ideas of the mind of God the exalted.’ Consequently, Sirhindi opines, these ideas have cast a reflection in the mirror of Divine Being, besides Whom, according to Ibn al-‘Arabī, nothing exists externally unless it be as a kind of ‘external shadow being’.46 Furthermore, since Ibn al-‘Arabī did not consider these ideas to be anything but the Divine Attributes and Names, the inevitable corollary was belief in the identicality of contingent creation with Absolute Being, denial of the existence of absolute evil, and rejection of the notion that anything can be described as evil in itself, unless it be in a relative or figurative sense.47

75

The Qur’an Revealed  Given the nature of Sirhindi’s objection, one wonders whether he actually subjected Ibn al-‘Arabī’s work to close scrutiny at all, or whether it was indeed the popular perception of wah. dat al-wujūd with which he had problems. For it is clear that Ibn al-‘Arabī in no way holds the Creator and the created to be absolutely one and the same thing, although it is true, as we have seen, that he does not say that they are absolutely different either; nor, for that matter, does he deny the role that evil plays in creation, even if he does consider it to be non-existent in the very real sense of the word, namely as something which is merely the lack of good. It is on this issue of the ontological status of evil in particular that Nursi is completely in accord with Ibn al-‘Arabī. Nursi also sees evil as a privation, as the non-existence of good, and treats it as a wholly relative concept with no actual instantiation in the ‘world out there’ at all. For Nursi, evil may have an external reality (h. aqīqat-i khārijī) but it certainly has no external existence (wujūd-i khārijī). How different this approach is to that of Sirhindī, for whom the very foundation of contingent creation is non-existence. According to him, non-existence is the mirror into which God reflects His attributes, and it is from the reflection of God’s attributes in this mirror of pure non-existence that the cosmos – the ‘world out there’ – comes into existence. Unlike Ibn al-‘Arabī, whose contention it is that God bestows existence on beings which, while non-existent in themselves, are present as possibilities in His knowledge, Sirhindi sees non-existence as something that is ‘out there’, and which, by being used as a mirror for the reflection of the Divine, facilitates the appearance of existent beings. 48 Quite how it is possible for the Divine attributes to be ‘reflected’ into something which, as its own designation suggests, does not exist, Sirhindi does not elucidate. From this point alone it is difficult to see why Sirhindi’s stance on existence should be seen as more meaningful or less ambiguous and misleading than that of Ibn al-‘Arabī. Before we ponder that, however, let us first examine Nursi’s appraisal of wah. dat al-wujūd as attributed to Ibn al-‘Arabī. In Nursi’s eyes, Ibn al-‘Arabī was “an awesome, brilliant scholar of reality and genius of the esoteric sciences”; he was “an elevated and wondrous spiritual pole, a unique one of the ages.” Nursi even describes him as a saint (walī) and one of the ‘people of truth’ (ahl alh. aqīqa). Nevertheless he was also human, and Nursi has no reservation in pointing out the errors in his approach. Yes, himself, Muhyiddin was rightly-guided and acceptable, but in all his works cannot be the guide and instructor. Since he very often proceeded in the realities without balance, he opposed the rules of the Sunnis and some of the things he said apparently express misguidance. However, he himself is free of misguidance. Sometimes, a word may appear to be unbelief, but the one who speaks it is not an unbeliever.49

Nursi’s stance vis-à-vis Ibn al-‘Arabī is not unlike that of Sirhindī, whose counter-theory of wah. dat al-shuhūd Nursi is usually portrayed as having preferred over Ibn al-‘Arabī’s existential monism. Sirhindi, like Nursi, did not reject Ibn al-‘Arabī outright: his criticisms were levelled only at certain aspects of his teachings, and mainly those which had been misrepresented by the long line of scholars who came to be seen later as interpreters of his teachings. Nursi, as we have seen, lauds Ibn al-‘Arabī as a genius, while Sirhindi claims that none of the mystics who came after the Andalusian scholar could have written what they

76

  Existence and Entities did without being influenced to some extent by his teachings or using his terminology, whether they approved of him on the whole or not. And this includes Nursi himself, who in approach, tenor and the terms he uses is clearly a thinker upon whom Ibn al-‘Arabī’s teachings have had a considerable impact. The problem that Nursi had with wah. dat al-wujud seems to have been not so much the concept itself as the damage that it might do in the hands of those unable to understand it properly. Teaching this question of the Unity of Existence to people at the present time causes serious harm. Just as when metaphors and similes pass from the hands of the learned to those of the common people and knowledge passes from scholars to the ignorant, they are thought to be literally true, so too when elevated truths like the Unity of Existence pass to the heedless and to the common people plunged into causes, they are thought to be Nature, and cause three significant instances of harm. Firstly, the way of the Unity of Existence is quite simply denying the universe on account of Almighty God. So when it is adopted by the heedless common people and enters their ideas which are tainted by materialist thought in particular, it takes the form of denying the Godhead on account of the universe and materiality.50

While Ibn al-‘Arabī did not deny the universe, it is easy to see how those who did not quite understand the subtleties of his teachings, or who failed to see how his vision was in a sense traduced by some of his less intellectually able interpreters, might have come to that conclusion. Nursi, however, is targeting the doctrine not as it was articulated by Ibn al-‘Arabī but as it was received and understood by the laity, and thus his strictures have to be understood in that light. If God and the universe are seen as one, then those who, as Nursi says, are already inclined towards materialism may end up sacrificing God on the altar of the phenomenal world - in exactly the same way that some of those who were determined to guard God’s incomparability at all costs were able to find a spiritual home within the doctrine of wah. dat al-wujūd and ended up sacrificing the existence of the phenomenal world on the altar of God. Secondly, the way of the Unity of Existence rejects the dominicality of anything other than God so vehemently that it denies all other than God and removes duality. Since it does not recognize the independent existence of anything, let alone that of evilcommanding souls, with the predominance of the idea of Nature at this time and pride and egotism inflating the evil-commanding soul and causing the Hereafter and the Creator to be forgotten to a degree, to inculcate the Unity of Existence in people whose evil-commanding souls are small pharaohs and quite simply have the capacity to take their own selves as their objects of worship, so inflates the evil-commanding soul that it can no longer be contained.51

It may be argued that Nursi’s criticisms of the ‘unity of existence’ are levelled here more at those who have misinterpreted the doctrine than, for example, at Ibn al-‘Arabī, who certainly did not dismiss that which is ‘other-than-God’. Moreover it is clear that Ibn al-‘Arabī was not guilty of neglecting either the Creator or the Hereafter, and it is equally clear that Nursi was aware of this. And it is not only the supporters of the ‘unity of existence’ who fail to

77

The Qur’an Revealed  ‘recognise the independent existence of anything’; Nursi himself was of the opinion that in and of itself, creation is in fact nothing to speak of at all: As we have explained in many of the Words, with regard to their faces which look to themselves, all things are nothing. They do not possess existences which are of themselves independent or constant. And they do not possess realities which subsist of themselves. But with regard to their aspects that look to Almighty God, that is, that signify a meaning other than themselves, they are not nothing. For in that aspect are to be seen the manifestations of eternal Names.52

Given that this does not seem so far removed from what Ibn al-‘Arabī is saying, why does Nursi go to such lengths here to dismiss the notion of ‘unity of existence’ and portray it as dysfunctional to the attainment of true faith? I believe there is a relatively simple answer. The rise of materialistic naturalism in the Muslim world at this time was a very tangible threat, and Nursi was prudent and diplomatic enough to realise that were he to show ambivalence towards the doctrine, he would be contributing – albeit indirectly – to the gradual slide of Muslim society towards atheism. It is perhaps for this reason that he neither makes any distinction between Ibn al-‘Arabī and his interpreters nor exculpates the former publicly for his part in spreading the doctrine, even though he considered the Andalusian thinker to be one of the most illustrious Muslim scholars of all time. Had he somehow put forward a case of special pleading on Ibn al-‘Arabī’s behalf as far as the ‘unity of existence’ was concerned, mixed messages would have been sent out. Ibn al-‘Arabī’s own works were far too inaccessible for the masses, whose perception of Ibn al-‘Arabī came almost exclusively from the study of his direct disciples, and from their followers after them. It was easier, then, for Nursi to pour cold water on the whole doctrine than to disentangle its acceptable strands from its misleading ones. Thirdly, while the All-Glorious One is free and exempt from, pure of and exalted above all change, alteration, division and being comprehended in time or place, it gives rise to conceptions which are not fitting for His necessary existence, holiness and being free of all defect, and leads to false teachings. Yes, if one who speaks of the Unity of Existence rises in the mind from the ground to the Pleiades, leaves the universe behind and fixes his gaze on the Sublime Throne, ecstatically reckoning the universe to be non-existent, through the strength of belief he may see everything to be directly from the Single One of Unity. But for one who stands behind the universe and looks at it, and sees causes before him and looks from the ground, is the possibility of becoming submerged in causes and falling into the swamp of Nature. The one who rises in the mind to the Divine Throne may say like Jalaluddin Rumi: “Listen! The words you hear uttered by everyone, you may hear as uttered by Almighty God, like natural gramophones.” But if you say to the one who cannot rise as high as Jalaluddin, nor see all beings from the ground to the Divine Throne in the form of mirrors: “Listen! You will hear the Divine speech from everything,” just as he will in effect fall from the Throne to the ground, he will also be afflicted by false imaginings contrary to the truth!...53

Nursi appears to be saying here that while belief in the ‘unity of existence’ is less sound than belief in the ‘unity of witnessing’, it is acceptable so long as those who champion it are able to keep within the bounds of propriety and not fall into an outright denial of the

78

  Existence and Entities reality of external existence. In short, it would appear that he is of the opinion that the belief is acceptable so long as it is in the right hands, held privately and not communicated to those for whose faith it may prove perilous. Nursi may have felt justified in proscribing the dissemination of such beliefs among the Muslim laity, but he was clearly unwilling to denounce luminaries such as Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī or Ibn al-‘Arabī, for whom he had the greatest respect, on account of their subscribing personally to such concepts and theories. The fact that, in his discussion of the ‘levels of existence’ outlined earlier in the chapter, Nursi mentions Ibn al-‘Arabī’s belief in the ‘unity of existence’ without any criticism must surely be testament to his tacit approval of the concept for those able to understand its complexities and not be led astray by it. Moreover, Nursi’s invocation of concepts such as al-a‘yān al-thābita – a staple of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s cosmology – shows how much his own mystical theology owes to the Andalusian master.54 Given his concern for the faith of the relatively uninitiated, and his assertion that they should not be exposed to concepts too sophisticated and thus potentially too dangerous for them to handle, and bearing in mind that he does not actually reject the concept of ‘unity of existence’ as being incorrect in and of itself, one is tempted to conclude that Nursi was of the opinion that the two concepts – ‘unity of existence’ and ‘unity of witnessing’ – were not mutually exclusive. Despite believing that it held certain dangers, Nursi was wholly accepting of saints and scholars who believed in the ‘unity of existence’ so long as they did not attempt to spread it among ordinary Muslims. As for the saints and scholars themselves, Nursi believed that a marginally safer and more appropriate path – a ‘sober’ path, as Nursi puts it – was belief in the ‘unity of witnessing’. Indeed, it is quite possible to see these apparently antithetical concepts as two sides of the same coin. The 18th century Sufi scholar Shah Walī Allah was of the opinion that the two were reconcilable, dismissing the differences between the two positions as ‘verbal controversies’ that came about simply as a result of the ambiguous and misleading language used by the supporters on each side.55 Nursi, too, as we shall see, concurs with Shah Walī Allāh – albeit for slightly different reasons - that the supporters of both doctrines are in fact saying the same thing. For example, despite his self-avowed preference for what he deems the more ‘sober’ of the two ways, Nursi on at least one occasion levels criticism at both the wujūdī and the shuhūdī approaches, dismissing them as poor substitutes for the sound knowledge of God that is to be had from a proper understanding of the Quran. For in order to attain a constant sense of the Divine presence, the way of Muhyi al-Din al-’Arabi says: “There is no existent save He,” going so far as to deny the existence of the universe. As for the others, again to gain a constant sense of the Divine presence, they said: “There is none witnessed save He,” entering a strange state as though casting the universe into absolute oblivion. However, the knowledge of God obtained from the AllWise Qur’an, in addition to affording a constant sense of the Divine presence, neither condemns the universe to non-existence nor imprisons it in absolute oblivion.56

In the above passage, Nursi appears to view wah. dat al-shuhūd with as much caution as he reserves for wah. dat al-wujūd. He sees both as states that are accessed by spiritual unveiling, but which cannot be maintained without at some point violating the right of that which is

79

The Qur’an Revealed  ‘other-than-God’ to be seen as something which is both in some sense existent and visible in and of itself. They are states which are accessible through ‘spiritual unveiling’ (kashf ) or ‘presential knowledge’ (al-‘ilm al-h. ud.   ūrī ) and thus not suitable – or, indeed, possible - for everyone. As such, in Nursi’s eyes they are most certainly not sources of knowledge as firm and unambiguous as that which he believes can be found in the Quran. In order to attain to a constant awareness of God’s presence, a person is not compelled to imagine the universe to be condemned to non-existence and to declare: “There is no existent but He,” like those who believe in the Unity of Existence (wah. dat al-wujūd), nor to suppose the universe to be condemned to imprisonment in absolute oblivion and to say, “There is nothing witnessed but He,” like those who believe in the Unity of Witnessing (wah. dat al-shuhūd ) . Rather, since the Qur’an has most explicitly pardoned the universe and released it from execution and imprisonment, the person on this path disregards the above, and dismissing beings from working on their own account and employing them on account of the All-Glorious Creator, and in the duty of manifesting the Most Beautiful Names and being mirrors to them, he considers them from the point of view of signifying something other than themselves; and being saved from absolute heedlessness, he enters the divine presence permanently; he finds a way leading to the Almighty God in everything.57

While Nursi does not dismiss outright the validity of either ‘unity of existence’ or ‘unity of witnessing’ as spiritual states, it is clear that he considered them potentially perilous, particularly if they are treated as final destinations rather than mere resting places on the path of spiritual development. We have seen how Sirhindī considered wah. dat al-wujūd to be a stage on the path at which Ibn al-‘Arabī had somehow become ‘stuck’. Now we see how Nursi considers both wah. dat al-wujūd and wah. dat al-shuhūd as states of spiritual absorption which, if not treated as mere stages which are to be departed from and left for more secure ground, may lead the wayfarer to condemn the universe either to non-existence or complete oblivion. While as a temporary state of spiritual awareness, wah. dat al-shuhūd was seen by him as preferable to wah. dat al-wujūd, it was clear that one was as perilous as the other when viewed as a prerequisite for spiritual growth. It is perhaps for this reason that in another very telling passage, he describes wah. dat al-shuhūd as simply another name for wah. dat al-wujūd, describing their dangers as though they are indeed one and the same thing. An extremely important way within Sufism is the Unity of Witnessing, which is another name for the Unity of Existence. This restricts the gaze to the existence of the Necessarily Existent, and sees other beings to be so weak and shadow-like in relation to Him that it declares that they do not deserve the name of existence. It envelops them in veils of imagination, and in the station of abandoning all things other than God counts them as nothing. It even imagines them to be non-existent, and goes so far as to belittle the manifestations of the divine names, saying they are mere imaginary mirrors. A significant fact about this way is that due to the powerful faith it inculcates and the elevated sainthood of those on it advancing to the degree of absolute certainty, the existence of contingent beings is so diminished that nothing remains in its view other than imagination and non-existence; it is as though it denies the universe on account of the Necessarily Existent One.

80

  Existence and Entities But this way holds dangers, the first of which is this: there are six pillars of faith, and such pillars as belief in the Last Day and belief in God require the existence of contingent beings. These firmly-founded pillars of belief cannot be constructed on imagination! For this reason, when a person following this way re-enters the world of sobriety from the worlds of ecstasy and intoxication, he should not bring them with him, nor should he act in accordance with them. Furthermore, he should not convert this way, which pertains to the heart and to illuminations and certain states, into a form that pertains to the reason, knowledge and words. For the laws and principles related to reason, knowledge and speech, which proceed from the Qur’an and the practices of the Prophet (PBWH), cannot sustain that way and are inapplicable to it. For this reason, the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs, and the leading authorities and interpreters of the law, and the authorities of the first generations of Islam, were not seen to practise it. This means that it is not the most elevated way. It may be elevated, but it is also deficient. It is very important, but it is also very perilous and difficult. Yet it is still very pleasurable. Those who embark on it for the pleasure do not want to leave it, and because of their self-centredness they suppose it to be the highest degree. Here, we shall describe one of the serious hazards on that important way. It is as follows: For the highest of the elite, who pass beyond the sphere of causes and, renouncing everything other than God, sever their attachment to contingent beings and enter a state of complete absorption in God, this way is a righteous way. But to present it in terms of intellectual knowledge to those who are submerged in causes, are enamoured of the world, and are plunged into materialist philosophy and nature, is to drown them in nature and materiality and distance them from the reality of Islam.58

Whether it is described as wah. dat al-wujūd or wah. dat al-shuhūd, the state of spiritual ecstasy which it denotes is one in which the existence or perception of anything ‘other-than-God’ is in a sense in abeyance: it was such a state, surely, that led the likes of Mans. ūr al-H .  allāj to claim union or identicality with God and claim that ‘I am the Truth’.59 While such ecstatic utterances may be understandable given the spiritual elevation of those who utter them, to the ears of the uninitiated they can be gravely misleading, and it precisely this with which Nursi was concerned. Although it is true that Nursi was of the opinion that the shuhūdī approach is preferable to the wujūdī, it is clear that he was talking in terms of a hierarchy of temporary spiritual states. “There is nothing in existence (mawjūd) apart from God” and “There is nothing witnessed (mashhūd) apart from God” may be true for some, but for Nursi “There is no object of worship (ma‘būd ) apart from God” is as a third way – the ma‘būdī way - true for all. For ultimately, in his view, man’s salvation is dependent not upon knowing exactly how God manifests Himself to man, or how Absolute Being is related to contingent existence, but upon man’s recognition of the only Reality that is worthy of worship and submission.

Continuous creation

As Nursi has already demonstrated, change and transformation are characteristics inherent to entities which are contingent, ephemeral and ‘coloured’ by apparent non-existence. Change and transformation, and the progress or regress which result from them, cannot be

81

The Qur’an Revealed  predicated of God on account of His Absoluteness. For change occurs when a thing moves from one state of being to another state which it currently lacks, and this cannot possibly apply to God, Whose perfection excludes notions such as lack and need. Motion – and hence change and transformation – is thus an innate quality of created beings. The notion of change is central to Nursi’s understanding of how things ‘other-thanGod’ are created and sustained throughout the duration of their sojourn in the phenomenal world. For Nursi, everything that is ‘other-than-God’ is in a state of ceaseless change and transformation: the cosmos as a collective entity is in constant flux, reflecting the numberless qualities and perfections of God through never-ending changes and transformations. In order that the infinite variety of His names and attributes may be made manifest, the loci of manifestation which act as mirrors for the Divine reflection must inevitably be as mutable as He is immutable. The infinite creativity of God and the ceaseless manifestation of His names and attributes are discerned by Nursi from a number of Quranic verses, including the ones below: All of those who are in the heavens and the earth entreat Him; and at every moment He is in a (new) state (of splendour).60 Indeed your Lord is the Doer of what He wills.61 He creates whatever He wills…62 Then contemplate the signs of God’s Mercy and how He gives life to the earth after its death 63 So glory to Him in Whose hands is the dominion of all things…64

The main concepts that these verses point to, and which Nursi’s teachings emphasise, are the infinitude of God and the lack of repetition in His self-manifestation; His ceaseless creativity in bestowing existence upon contingent beings in whichever way He wills; and His continuous creation, re-creation and maintenance of all beings during their sojourn in the phenomenal world. When we look at the universe, we see that one group of creatures, which are tossed around in the flood of time and follow on one after the other, convoy after convoy, come for a second and then immediately vanish. Another group comes for a minute and then passes on. One species stops by in the manifest world for an hour and then enters the world of the unseen. Some of them come and alight in the manifest world for a day, some of them for a year, some for a century and some for an age; they perform their duties and then depart. This astonishing travelling and passage of beings and flow and flux of creatures is driven and directed with such order, balance and wisdom, and the one who commands them and those convoys does so with such insight, purpose and planning that even if all minds were to unite and become one mind, it would be unable to comprehend the essence of this wise direction; it would be unable to find any fault in it and so could not criticize it. Thus, within this dominical activity, not even allowing any of those pleasing creatures that it loves, especially animate creatures, to open their eyes, the pen of Divine Determining and Decree dispatches them to the world of the Unseen; not permitting them even to draw a breath, it discharges them from the life of this world. It continuously fills the guesthouse of the world and empties it without the guests’ consent. Making the

82

  Existence and Entities globe of the earth like a slate for writing and erasing, through the manifestation of He grants life and deals death, the pen of Divine Determining and Decree ceaselessly inscribes on it writings, and renews and replaces them.65

Here, Nursi likens the phenomenal world to a caravanserai where guests arrive, stay for various lengths of time and then depart. The guests in this case are the entities – the products of Divine creativity – which are brought from the unseen realm (‘ālam al-ghayb) to the visible realm (‘ālam al-shahāda), where they reflect those Divine names and attributes which determine their particular entification, before returning to the realm of the unseen. This coming and going of entities is a constant process, necessitated by the neverending treasures – the Divine names – which must of necessity be displayed. The names and attributes of God constitute an inexhaustible treasury which is reflected in the infinitely varied entities which He brings forth from it. To illustrate this, we can add to the Quranic verses adduced by Nursi the following: And there is not a thing but its (sources and) treasures (inexhaustible) are with Us; but We only send down thereof in due and ascertainable measures.66

The inscriptions from the ‘pen of Divine Determining’ are ceaseless. The ‘writing and erasing’ points both to the fact that God’s infinite treasuries are constantly being brought from the unseen, made manifest as creation in the visible world, and then taken back to the unseen. In other words, from the treasure-chest of possibilities which exist in His knowledge, He is constantly bestowing external existence on things and then, once they have reached what Nursi calls their ‘point of perfection’ (nuqta-i kamāl ), they begin their decline and are eventually removed from the visible world and taken back to the unseen realm.67 These descents from the unseen to the visible world and the subsequent ascents from the visible world to the unseen realm are continuous, and point to the infinitude of treasures that God makes known as He creates forever. Moreover, it is not only the cosmos as a whole that is subject to this constant change: each individual entity is, as a microcosm of the whole, similarly in a state of flux and flow. Since the mirrors reflecting the sacred beauties of those Names and the tableaux displaying their beautiful embroideries and the pages setting forth their beautiful truths are all the beings of the universe, those constant and eternal Names will entirely and unceasingly renew and change the universe through their manifestations as a consequence of that sacred Divine love and due to the mystery of Self-Subsistence. In this way they will display their endless manifestations and infinite, meaningful embroideries and books both to the witnessing gaze of the All-Glorious Self-Subsistent One, Whom they signify, and to the studious gaze of uncountable numbers of conscious creatures and creatures endowed with spirits, and will display countless tableaux out of a finite and limited thing and numerous individuals out of a single individual and multiple truths out of a single truth.68

Nursi tells us here that the Divine names manifest themselves in such a way that they ‘display countless tableaux out of a finite and limited thing and numerous individuals out of a single individual’. This points to the perpetual creation and re-creation of each individual entity in ever-changing forms. No created being lasts for more than an instant without

83

The Qur’an Revealed  taking on some new form, bestowed on it by God. Just as the process of manifestation as a whole is ceaseless, so too is the creation and recreation of each contingent being within its limited life span. Thus the ‘writing and erasing’ in the passage above can also be interpreted as a reference to the perpetual renewal of things themselves while they are in the visible world. Flux, as we have seen, is innate to the cosmos and to each individual creature in it, and just as there are an infinite number of ‘possibilities’ within Divine knowledge – an infinite number of permutations of names and attributes and an endless treasury of ‘words’ for God to ‘utter’ 69 – each individual also undergoes endless changes and transformations during its stay in the visible world. At each instant it is recreated in a new form, in one sense similar but in another sense completely different to, and ontologically detached from, its previous form. Each being is thus ‘written, erased and re-written’ from instant to instant, changing and transforming continuously, unable to sustain itself for even a second and dependent entirely on the nurturing and sustaining power of Divine creativity to maintain it in a state of external existence. In short, God’s creativity – be it with regard to the cosmos as a whole or each individual entity as microcosm - is operative constantly, as the famous ‘Throne Verse’ in the Quran attests, There is no god but He - the Living, the Self-Subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth.70

For Nursi, the moment-to-moment subsistence of all entities is dependent on the SelfSubsistence (qayyūmiyya) of their Creator, who is no sense an ‘absentee landlord’. The Creator as described by Nursi through the prism of his understanding of the Quran is not one who acted as the ‘First Cause’ of the cosmos and then sat back to let everything unfold in time through a process of natural causation. One of Nursi’s main objectives in highlighting the infinite creativity and continuous activity of God is to pour cold water on the notion that He sets the ball rolling and then retires, only to reappear now and again to work a miracle or intervene in some matter. To put it crudely, Nursi’s God is a ‘working God’ – working, of course, in the sense that the process of creation which proceeds from the manifestation of His names is ceaseless.

Nursi’s ‘geography of the Unseen’

Human consciousness when attuned to the notion of a transcendent Creator is able to discern two foundational levels or modes of existence. In the Quran we encounter them as ‘the unseen’ (al-ghayb) and ‘the visible’ (al-shahāda) – terms that have been used on a number of occasions so far in this chapter. In very broad terms, this concept pair of unseen/seen corresponds to the apparent dichotomy of God and the cosmos, or ‘God and other-thanGod’. As Nursi says, existence in all of its forms can in no way be restricted to the world we see ‘out there’: The innumerable sorts of existence could not be restricted to this manifest world; it could not contain them; the physical world but is a lace veil strewn over the irradiating worlds of the Unseen.71

84

  Existence and Entities Belief in God is, according to the Quran, predicable ultimately on belief in the ‘unseen’ – the ghayb – and while none of the many treatises which make up his work is dedicated to the subject of the ‘realm of the Unseen’, direct references and allusions to it abound in the Risale-i Nur. And of course it may be argued that the opening chapter of this book, dealing with Divine Unity, is an attempt to throw light on a realm which lies beyond the borders of sensory experience. In order to map the ‘realm of the Unseen’ – the ‘ālam al-ghayb – Muslim theologians, philosophers and mystics through the ages have adopted different approaches and produced a plethora of cosmological schemata. Despite their variety, nearly all of them share certain features, the most obvious common denominator being that all agree upon the basic notion that there is a more or less clear conceptual distinction between the visible and non-visible aspects of creation. That Nursi’s scheme is a relatively simple one, rarely venturing beyond the confines of the binary system that posits a ‘realm of the visible’ and a ‘realm of the unseen’, suggests not that he was unaware or dismissive of more complex conceptualizations but rather that he tended on the whole to think them unfit for purpose. One always gets the impression that Nursi’s theology was, on the whole, intended to be more practical than speculative. Occasionally he would state openly that he was addressing a particular audience: his treatise on Divine Determining (qadar), for example, was written expressly with scholars in mind. However, his professed goal in writing the Risale-i Nur was the strengthening of belief and so most of his work was aimed at lay readers rather than experts in theology. Given this, one assumes that he saw the kind of cosmological constructs proffered by the mystics and the philosophers as unnecessarily complex, and that he preferred instead to reduce them to basic concepts which expressed everything that needed to be expressed but in a way that was accessible to the widest possible audience. This is not to say that he never had occasion to use cosmological terminology that would not have looked out of place in a treatise on metaphysics, but if he did so, he did so sparingly and in a manner commensurate with the intellectual capabilities of his readers. To further refine our understanding of Nursi’s conceptualisation of existence, it is important that we understand how he sees the world of the unseen and its connection to the world of which we have direct knowledge: the external reality we know as the world ‘out there’. In order to better understand his approach, we need first to make sense of some of the assumptions which underlie the compartmentalisation of cosmic reality in the first place. To this end we will look at three cosmological schemes. The first is one of the more complex formulations, and belongs firmly in the mystical tradition; the second is arguably the most commonplace and occupies a middle ground between the mystical and the theological; the third is that of Nursi himself. A somewhat detailed exploration of the teachings regarding the ‘unseen realm’ of scholars other than Nursi is warranted here, not least because their impact on Nursi in terms of both concept and terminology is not inconsiderable, even if Nursi’s actual approach is very much his own. The first scheme is one which posits the existence of what may be termed loosely as ‘the five Divine presences’. The idea predates Ibn al-‘Arabī, but was developed – and often taken in different directions – by his disciples and others who were influenced by his teachings. There are thus a number of different versions of the doctrine in existence which

85

The Qur’an Revealed  differ in their respective schematizations, but which have enough conceptual overlap to warrant our identifying them as variations on the same theme. As we have seen in our exposition of the ‘unity of existence’, from the Oneness of God’s Being follows the oneness of all that is other-than-God. Moreover, since only God is existent necessarily, all that is other-than-God exists as a shadow or manifestation of His Being, which is One. And since there can, for the adherents of this school of thought, be only One real existent, creation can be described as existing in a dependent sense only, as a reflection or manifestation of God. But if God is One and His creation reflects that, how do we account for multiplicity? How do we explain the ‘manyness’ of those things which are other-than-God? Ibn al-‘Arabī and those who came after him divided all existent beings - God and everything that is other-than-God – into different categories or modes of existence, although admittedly this only goes some way to providing a satisfying solution to the problem. One of the terms used to describe a particular manner in which God as the One Necessary Being manifests Himself is h. ad.  ra or ‘presence’. One of the ways in which Ibn al-‘Arabī uses the term is to denote the various realms - or, as Nursi would say, ‘worlds’ – of existence, such as the h. ad.  rat al-malakūt (or, in Nursian parlance, ‘ālam al-malakūt or the ‘world of the inner dimension of things’). Ibn al-‘Arabī does not actually discuss the ‘five Divine Presences’ as a discrete theory, and although he does refer to the ‘Presences’ individually, he never actually describes how they are enmeshed into one coherent whole; it was for his followers, and their followers after him, to codify his ideas and give it doctrinal form. The ‘Divine Presences’ are basically the different modes in which God makes Himself manifest. While God and all that is ‘other-than-God’ clearly belong to different conceptual realms as far as existence is concerned, they have in common the fact that they are ‘entifications’ of Being. Entification (ta‘ayyun) means ‘to be or to become an entity.’ An entity is something about which we are able to speak: any ‘thing’ which we can conceive, perceive and talk about, constitutes an entity. In this sense, God is an entity and all that are other-than-God are also entities. However, bearing in mind the concept-pair of tanzīh/tashbīh, God is not an entity in the same way that beings other than him are entities. For since they are given existence by Him, things which are other-than-God are entifications of Being: they are particular modes and ways in which God manifests Himself. But since His Being is by default not capable of being entified or delimited, we cannot say that Being is identical with any particular thing which exists, for it were identical with one thing, it could not be identical at the same time with another. Being is in a sense all things – for it gives existence to them – but it cannot be defined by the characteristics and qualities of any one of them. God is not the world and the world is not God; rather the world is a manifestation of Being, it is not Being itself. Through its relation with His attributes, names and acts, the world is a manifestation of God, but it is not a manifestation of the Essence of God, i.e. God as He knows Himself. The Divine Essence is not God as we usually understand Him, for when we speak of God, it is in terms of the relations that we have with Him by dint of our connection to His names, attributes and acts. If we understand God at all, we understand Him as He is manifest to us in relation to us, not as He really is in and of Himself. Indeed, since the Divine Essence can be neither entified nor delimited, we can never know God as He knows Himself.72

86

  Existence and Entities Given this, the need for some kind of differentiation between modes of manifestation or entification becomes understandable, whether it be the somewhat overblown schemata of the mystics based on the notion of ‘Five Presences’ or the simple binary division of ‘unseen’ and ‘visible’ made by the Quran, which is conceptually accessible to everyone. Arguably the most rigorously schematised articulation of the ‘Five Presences’ can be gleaned from the teachings of Abū T.   ālib ibn Makkī (d. 996), whose influence on Ghazālī was considerable. In this particular five-fold scheme, the realms – in descending order – are those of hāhūt, lāhūt, jabarūt, malakūt and nāsūt. The reader should be intimidated neither by the number of classifications nor the apparently exotic terminology used to describe them, for what they actually boil down to is exactly what Nursi expresses in a simpler and less cluttered way. An exposition of them is necessary, not least because it was precisely from such sources that Nursi drew inspiration – albeit indirectly - for his own cosmological conceptualisation. The first ‘presence’, hāhūt, derives its name from the word hūwa or ‘He’, meaning the name of the Divine Essence (al-dhāt ). The Divine Essence signifies God as only He knows Himself, absolute and indivisibly One, as the Quran attests: Say: He is Allah, the One and Only The Absolute and Eternally Besought of all; He begets not, nor is He begotten And there is none like unto Him.73

According to this scheme, it is within the realm of hāhūt that the ‘seed’ of Divine creativity is to be found. For with Absoluteness comes the notion of ‘All-Possibility’ : infinitude, which is an aspect of this realm, implies unlimited possibility, and unlimited possibility implies the ‘desire’ of the Divine Essence to make itself known. The ‘hidden treasure’ Tradition at the heart of Muslim mystical cosmology attests to this, in effect describing God as an unlimited Source of theophanies which exist in a sense in potentia and which are made actual through the acts of manifestation and creation. Manifestation implies a kind of Divine ‘selflimitation’ – an apparent ‘negation’ of the Absolute whereby God seemingly ‘limits’ Himself and creates the cosmos, which is ‘other-than-God’ and, for all intents and purposes, a kind of negation of the Absolute which is nonetheless – in one sense at least – nothing but the Absolute, since it is from Him. The second ‘presence’ is the realm of lāhūt, derived from al-ilāh, or ‘the Divinity’, the ‘One worthy of worship’. This realm has been called the ‘relatively Absolute’ : it is ‘Absolute’ because, when viewed from the perspective of existence, it appears the same as the Absolute; and it is ‘relative’ because Its possibilities are no longer absolute in themselves, but are now ‘delimited’ by other possibilities. The realm of lāhūt is thus where we see differentiations appearing in the form of Names and Attributes. For example, al-Rah.  īm or ‘the AllCompassionate’, as one quality among others is differentiated from, say, al-Muntaqim – the ‘One Who avenges’, or al-Ghafūr, ‘The All-Forgiving’ – even though at the level of the Absolute, no Name which qualifies the Divine Essence may ‘exclude’ another.74 It is for this reason that lāhūt is seen as the domain of the Names and Attributes; it is the domain of God as we are able to know Him rather than as He knows Himself – the God Who creates, nurtures, sustains, hears and responds to invocations, rewards and punishes.

87

The Qur’an Revealed  The realm of hāhūt is thus emblematic of God’s incomparability, while the realm of lāhūt expresses God’s immanence. The assertion of Divine incomparability may well be the sine qua non of ultimate salvation, but it is undeniable that without the ‘personal’ God seen from the perspective of lāhūt there can be no world, no attributes made manifest and no concept of knowledge and worship of that ‘hidden Treasure’. In this sense, then, it is in the realm of lāhūt that the Undifferentiated becomes relatively differentiated and manifestation – and hence creation – begins.75 The third ‘presence’ in the hierarchy is jabarūt or the ‘realm of power’. This realm has been described as the ‘domain of supra-formal or angelic manifestation’ – a domain or sphere which encloses formal or material creation, just as it itself is enclosed by the two higher domains. The realm of jabarūt is also said to be the realm of ‘archetypes’ and also the realm of the ‘Spirit’ (al-rūh.  ), which in one sense ‘reflects the uncreated’.76 The ‘realm of the inner reality of things’ or malakūt is the fourth ‘presence’ in the series. In the mystical schema, malakūt has been described as the domain of the jinn . Beings who are ‘created from fire’, according to the Qur’an, the jinn are capable of knowing and worshipping God or choosing to reject Him and opting for unbelief instead. The revelations which are vouchsafed to man are also vouchsafed to the jinn, whose duty it is to do in the realm of malakūt what man is tasked to do in his realm, namely to attain consciously and willingly to the witness and worship of God. The realm of malakūt, which is also said to be the place in which certain parts of paradise and hell are to be found, both encloses the realm below it and permeates it. The realm below – and permeated by – malakūt is the fifth ‘presence’, known as nāsūt. Derived most probably from the word nās or ‘mankind’, this realm is also known as the ‘world of dominion’ or ‘ālam al-mulk. The ‘world of dominion’ is the corporeal phenomenon we know as the ‘world out there’ - the cosmos of which we are part and which we apprehend with our physical senses. It is these three lowest ‘presences’ – jabarūt, malakūt and nāsūt – which constitute creation or what we understand as existence. It is characterised by time and space, by form, number and matter. For the mystics, its existence is but a shadow of real Being – of Allah the Absolute, the domains of which are hāhūt and lāhūt. As mentioned before, there are different versions of this five-fold scheme, some of which use different terms to describe the ‘presences’ we have just outlined. For example, the realm of malakūt is sometimes called the ‘world of images or symbols’ (‘ālam al-mithāl ), while nāsūt or ‘ālam al-mulk is often called ‘the world of the visible’ or ‘ālam al-shahāda (lit. ‘world of witnessing’, for it is where the manifestation of God’s names are witnessed). Other scholars combine ‘presences’. For example, some group hāhūt and lāhūt together and call them ‘the world of the absolute unseen’ (‘ālam al-ghayb al-mut. laq), while jabarūt and malakūt are often joined together as ‘the world of the relative unseen’ or ‘ālam al-ghayb alnisbī. Some writers use jabarūt to describe what we have just outlined as malakūt, and vice versa.77 While Ghazālī was clearly aware of the ‘five Divine Presences’ schema, he opted for a relatively straightforward tripartite cosmological model that comprised mulk, malakūt and jabarūt. However, the way in which he understood and articulated these differed considerably from the earlier schemes of the Sufi masters, especially as far as jabarūt is concerned.

88

  Existence and Entities For Ghazālī, mulk denotes the corporeal entity we know as the cosmos – the visible ‘world out there’, of which we are part and which we can understand through our physical senses. Ghazālī often refers to it as ‘ālam al-mulk wa al-shahāda (lit. ‘the realm of dominion and witnessing’). Behind this realm lies another world – one that can be perceived only by inner vision and the spiritual senses. This is the realm of the unseen, which Ghazālī often refers to as ‘ālam al-ghayb wa al-malakūt (lit. ‘the realm of the unseen and the inner realities of things’).78 The visible and the unseen realm – the mulk and the malakūt – should not however be understood as implying that they are simply two parts of the physical world, one visible to the human eye and the other not. For Ghazālī they are totally different dimensions. The realm of mulk is sometimes referred to by him as the ‘ālam al-khalq (lit. ‘world of creation’), which is the physical world of corporeality, quantity, proportion and extent; the realm of malakūt, which is also referred to as the ‘ālam al-amr (lit. ‘the world of the Divine ordinances’), is a realm that is above – conceptually rather than spatially – the world of dominion, of quantity, extent, proportion and physicality. The realm of malakūt, Ghazali says, is the world which God has brought into existence without gradation by his eternal command (al-amr al-azalī), and which remains in one and the same state with neither increase nor decrease in it. It is the world of the ‘Preserved Tablet’ (lawh.  -i mah.  fūz.  ), on which God’s decrees regarding the life-trajectory of all created beings is recorded; malakūt is thus the realm of Divine Determining (qadar), Nursi’s understanding of which we shall be exploring in full in Chapter Twelve. It is also the world of prophecy and revelation, both of which transcend reason and imagination; just as the stage of reason (‘aql ) is beyond that of sense perception, so too the realm of malakūt is beyond reason.79 The realm of malakūt is, therefore, non-rational, but it is not irrational: reason may not be able to access it without the aid of revelation, but once the concept is understood, reason may embrace it as acceptable, even if its existence is not demonstrable empirically. In fact, the realm of malakūt is a created realm, but the stuff of its creation would appear not to be the same as the matter from which the realm of mulk is formed. The two realms of mulk and malakūt are thus completely different, but there is a correspondence between them. According to Ghazālī, mulk is the mirror in which malakūt is reflected: all of the events and occurrences in the former are the symbols or representations (mithāl ) of what exists in the latter. For Ghazālī, the ‘ālam al-mulk does not have existence in the real sense of the word, and on occasion goes so far as to call it ‘pure nothingness’ – a stance which Nursi, whose view of the two realms is generally in accord with that of Ghazālī, most certainly does not take. Ghazālī thus calls the realm of mulk a ‘world of falsehood and delusion’ (‘ālam al-zūr wa al-ghurūr) or ‘the realm of deception’ (‘ālam altalbīs), for it is man’s misidentification of this ‘shadow world’ as the true reality which leads him astray.80 On the third realm in his cosmological scheme, namely jabarūt, Ghazālī is rather vague. Drawing together the rather loose threads of his discourse on the subject, one concludes that in his schema, jabarūt is situated in some sense between the realms of mulk and malakūt, both of which it overlaps, thus belonging in part to each. As such, it may be described as a kind of bridge or isthmus which connects the unseen to the visible. Ghazālī says that just as the world is divided into three realms, man is similarly divided: his corporeal self is his

89

The Qur’an Revealed  ‘realm of mulk’; the unseen faculties he possesses such as spirit, intellect and will constitute his ‘realm of malakūt’; and the perceptions facilitated by the senses in his bodily organs which allow him to apprehend rationally the existence of his unseen realm and what it contains - even though he cannot experience them directly – constitute his ‘realm of jabarūt ’. The realm of jabarūt, then, is the bridge between the material realm of his physical being and the supra-material realm of his psycho-spiritual being. By way of illustration, Ghazālī says that the lights of pure knowledge (ma‘rifa) shine from the world of malakūt into man’s inner heart (qalb), which also belongs to that unseen realm. However, the effects that this knowledge produces, such as awe, fear or joy, belong to the world of jabarūt, descending to man’s ‘chest’ (s.adr), the seat of his feelings, which also lies within that intermediate realm. Man’s inner heart thus symbolises the realm of malakūt, while his ‘chest’ is the intermediate realm which lies between his ‘heart’ and his physical being, or his ‘realm of mulk ’.81 Elsewhere, Ghazālī likens the realm of jabarūt to a ship that moves between the land and the water. The ship, he says, is never wholly at sea and never wholly in dock. Anyone who walks on the earth walks in the realm of mulk. If he is able to embark on the ship, he sails backwards and forwards through the realm of jabarūt. And when he finally learns to ‘walk on water’, he moves effortlessly through the realm of malakūt. Here, Ghazālī appears to be alluding to the potentiality that man has to transcend the realm of mulk and, by crossing the bridge that is his realm of jabarūt, access the realm of malakūt and fulfil his spiritual potential. As for Said Nursi, his is a relatively straightforward, two-tier cosmological system which comprises the overarching duality of the realm of the unseen (ghayb) and the realm of the visible (shahāda), with a number of ‘sub-realms’ also identified as belonging to the former. Nursi sometimes talks in terms of ‘ālam al-malakūt and ‘ālam al-mulk, which correspond approximately – but not exactly – to the unseen and the visible realms respectively. The correspondence is not exact because God is unseen in the absolute sense of the word, while malakūt includes things which are created and potentially visible, such as angels. Thus if we are to include God as part of the unseen, it would arguably be more appropriate to describe His ‘domain’ in that realm as the ‘absolute unseen’ and the domain of the rest of the inhabitants of malakūt as the ‘relative unseen’. Nursi’s cosmology is not a rigidly schematised one; nowhere in the Risale do we find a treatise or discussion dedicated solely to the hierarchization of existence, the relationship of the two main ‘realms’ or the conceptual location of the various ‘sub-realms’ within them. Nevertheless, whatever more rigorous cartographers of the unseen such as Ibn Makkī and Ghazālī chart in their rather elaborate schemata, we can also find in the Risale, either mentioned directly or alluded to, but in an almost incidental fashion. Occasionally, he will digress from the subject in hand to explain in greater detail a term that may be problematic for some of his audience, but for the most part he takes it as given that the vast majority of his readers are aware of the main division of ghayb and shahāda, which is probably as much as he thought they actually needed to be aware of in order to understand the points he was making. For Nursi, as for Ghazālī, ‘ālam al-mulk denotes the corporeal world which is accessible to sense perception: it is the phenomenal world, the ‘world out there’, the domain of the visible – which is why he also calls it ‘ālam al-shahāda – and the realm of time, space, cause

90

  Existence and Entities and effect. In the Risale, mulk is almost always discussed alongside malakūt, with which it forms a distinct concept-pair. Everything has two aspects: the outer (mulkiyya) aspect, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. Different forms intrude on it in succession, like the back of a mirror. The inner aspect (malakūtiyya) looks to the Creator. It is transparent in every respect, like the front of a mirror. Thus the creation of bad is not bad, because its creation in respect of the inner face (malakūtiyya) is good. The creation of bad is to complete the good, so is indirectly good.82

What is of note in this passage is not Nursi’s explanation of good and bad: we have already established that there is actually no ‘creation of bad’ and that his use of the phrase is for the sake of convention only. What concerns us here is his assertion that not only does the cosmos as a whole admit of two complementary realms – mulk and malakūt – but also every single entity is two-sided: one side looks to itself and the phenomenal world around it; the other looks to the Creator. Divine power looks first (ta‘alluq) to the inner face (malakūtiyya) of things, and this in all things is transparent and beautiful as discussed. Yes, just as the Most High made the face of the sun burnished and shining and the moon incandescent, so He made the inner face of the night and the clouds luminous and beautiful.83

The inner face of things, the face that looks to the Creator, is clearly here meant to represent the receptivity of entities to the impress of the Divine Names. Every locus of manifestation – a term which Nursi uses on numerous occasions – receives the ‘lights’ of the Divine names on the inner face of its metaphorical mirror, where they become instantiated as an external entity in accordance with the ‘form’ or ‘pattern’ of that entity which exists in Divine knowledge. Man, who, as we shall see in a later chapter, is able to receive and reflect all of the Divine names, is veiled from his inner face by his own corporeality, and experiences the Divine names through his various senses – both physical and supra-material – as qualities or perfections that he possesses. Those qualities are expressed through his ‘outer face’, which looks to the phenomenal world. Again, as we shall see, it is part of man’s test to see past the ‘outer face’ of things and apprehend the realities of the ‘inner face’, or the realm of malakūt, which looks directly to the Source of those qualities he appears to possess. The Divine names which connect directly with the ‘inner face’ of things do so by being ‘carried’ by entities known as malā’ika, which is usually translated into English as ‘angels’. The realm of malakūt is thus the domain of the malā’ika, who are the ‘bearers’ of God’s command, “Be!” For to anything which We have willed, We but say the word, “Be”, and it is.84

As we shall see in a later chapter, the angels of the Quran, while denizens of the realm of malakūt, act from one perspective as a kind of interface between the unseen and the visible worlds. The Divine command “Be!” signals the bestowal of existence on the pre-phenomenal forms of entities which reside in the Divine knowledge; the bestowal of existence is the conferring upon those entities of various names, or permutations of names, of God, which

91

The Qur’an Revealed  are ‘carried’ through the realm of malakūt and into external existence as mulk by the malā’ika. The visible realm is the veil on the unseen world: it prevents us from perceiving directly the workings of the angels as they ‘bear’ the commands of God and bring the invisible into existence. And the unseen is a veil on God, albeit a veil composed of different levels and degrees of light. All created things are in a sense veils on God, and it is only with spiritual growth that one sees past the veils and witnesses the Truth directly.85 Nursi talks in terms of ‘worlds’ of the unseen rather than just a single world, which is why we suggested the term ‘sub-realms’. For there is much more to ‘alam al-malakūt than the malā’ika : the realm of the unseen is also the realm of the jinn, the spirits of the dead, of heaven and hell; it is also the realm of several planes of existence on which dwell the spirits of martyrs and prophets such as Idrīs and Jesus.86 It is also the realm of barzakh, the stopping place for man once he has died and is waiting to be resurrected.87 It is the domain of the ‘Preserved Tablet’, on which all events are ‘written’, and it is home to the ‘Clear Book’ and the ‘Clear Record’, which symbolise God’s knowledge of all events from pre-eternity to post-eternity. 88 It is also home to the ‘world of similitudes or idea-images’ (‘ālam almithāl), a transitional level of existence in which abstract forms precede their emergence into corporeality in the realm of mulk. Similar on one level to the Platonic archetypes, these abstract forms comprise an imaginal – but not imaginary - realm of ideas and images which find expression in material form in the phenomenal world. In this realm, objects in the phenomenal realm are represented by idea-images which are appropriate for the supra-material realm of the unseen, and which comprise the true reality of things as they are without the veil of the corporeal.89 The ‘ālam al-mithāl corresponds to that part of the realm of malakūt where these images subsist before entering the phenomenal world, but it also relates to that part of the realm of malakūt which is home to the spirits of beings after their sojourn in the phenomenal world of mulk. It is a domain in which exist all the suprasensory forms of the deeds we have performed, the forms of our thoughts, our desires and all our behaviours. The realm of malakūt is also the domain of the ‘patterns’ of entities which reside in a state of apparent non-existence - or what we may term ‘pre-phenomenal potentiality’ – prior to their emergence into the realm of mulk as a result of God’s bestowal of existence upon them. This realm may appear in one sense to be identical to the ‘ālam al-mithāl just described; indeed, Nursi sometimes uses different terms to describe the same reality. However, from his explanations below it would appear that there is a qualitative difference between the abstract forms of entities and the ‘patterns’ or ‘blueprints’ upon which their material creation is based. The giving of external existence to things whose forms are present in His knowledge or who exist as knowledge, and bringing them out of apparent non-existence, is as easy and simple as striking a match or spreading a special liquid over invisible writing in order to reveal it, or transposing an image from photographic film to paper. Through the command of Be!” and it is, the Maker brings into external existence from apparent non-existence things whose plans, programmes, shapes and proportions are present in His knowledge.90

Nursi’s assertion that entities in the phenomenal world are forms which have always existed in Divine knowledge, and are brought out of apparent non-existence in more or less the same way that someone would reveal words written in invisible ink, is interesting on a number of

92

  Existence and Entities levels. Two points in particular stand out. The first is that his positing of pre-phenomenal ‘patterns’ or forms which are present – and presumably have always, and will always be, present – in Divine knowledge is not at all dissimilar to Ibn al-Arabi’s explanation of the ‘immutable entities’ (al-a‘yān al-thābita). The second is that the non-existence from which God creates – a process described misleadingly by the term creatio ex nihilo (lit. ‘creation from nothing’) – is in fact only apparent non-existence. In the following passage, both points are corroborated, with Nursi showing that not only was he well aware of the doctrine of ‘immutable entities’ but also that he did not believe in the notion of absolute non-existence. Almighty God is the possessor of such Absolute Power that He can despatch and bring into being existence and non-existence most easily, as though they were two houses in relation to His power and will. If He wishes He can do this in a day or in an instant. Anyway there is no absolute non-existence, for His knowledge is all-embracing. And there is nothing outside the sphere of Divine knowledge so that something can be cast there. The non-existence within the sphere of His knowledge is external non-existence and a title for something concealed but existent in Divine knowledge. Some scholars have called these beings existent in Divine knowledge “latent realities” (al-a‘yān al-thābita). In which case, to go to extinction is to be temporarily divested of external dress and to enter upon existence in Divine knowledge, existence in meaning. That is to say, transitory, ephemeral beings leave external existence and their essences are clothed in what has the meaning of existence; they pass from the sphere of Divine power to that of Divine knowledge.91

There would appear to be only one conclusion that we can draw from these remarkably insightful passages. Entities in the phenomenal world neither come from non-existence nor return to non-existence: before entering the phenomenal world, they exist as forms or patterns within His knowledge, and as such must be seen as immutable: God knows precisely what the state or mode of every being will be at every instant of its existence, and since one instant of its being is not like the next, its pre-phenomenal ‘form’ in Divine knowledge for that very instant of its phenomenal existence must of necessity be immutable. Furthermore, when it departs the phenomenal world, it does not go to nothingness; rather, it passes from the ‘sphere of Divine power’, which is the realm of mulk, and returns to the sphere of Divine knowledge, which is the realm of malakūt, where its state and situation will be commensurate with the progress it has made during its sojourn in the phenomenal world. Not only do these passages seem to suggest that Nursi’s cosmological leanings were closer to those of Ibn al-‘Arabī than most would possibly like to think, in their outright rejection of the notion of absolute non-existence, they serve to set Nursi apart from Sirhindī on arguably the most crucial issue – the issue of the very foundation of the external existence of entities.

Conclusion

It would be tempting to say that in his exposition of the relationship between the Absolute and the contingent, in his explanation of the levels and worlds of wujūd, in his deconstruction of both wah.  dat al-wujūd and wah.  dat al-shuhūd, and in his exploration of the continuous

93

The Qur’an Revealed  creativity of God, Nursi provides us with the definitive answer to the question, “What, precisely, is the nature of existence?” Certainly, in openly advocating the shuhūdī over the wujūdī perspective, and then the ma‘būdi perspective over both, he offers what he believes is the ‘sober’ – and thus safer – path to apprehending the reality behind the existence of the cosmos. And in the final analysis perhaps this is all that counts. For in Nursi’s eyes, to say “there is no object of worship apart from God” is the one that is more conducive to the preservation in man’s mind of the Creator’s incomparability, and it is precisely this characteristic of the Divine which, in drawing a clear line of demarcation between Divine Being and cosmic existence, allows man to see God in His absolute transcendence as One Who must be known, loved and worshipped, thus saving him from any possible descent into pantheism and the ensnarement of causation and materiality. But in identifying the safer path to belief regarding existence, does Nursi provide us with a precise definition of what existence actually is? To be frank, I do not think that he does. But that is no fault of his. Neither Ibn al-‘Arabī nor Sirhindī is able to deliver an absolutely precise, readily fathomable and rationally satisfying account of existence, so why should we expect anything more of Nursi, or, indeed, of any other limited entity who is attempting to make complete sense of the Absolute? Despite all of their apparently compelling analogies of light, mirrors and shadows, and their attempts to factor nonexistence into the equation in ways which are never truly compelling, the most we can realistically hope for is an approximation of the truth behind the phenomenon of existence: the whole truth and nothing but the truth will surely always be far too much to ask. Nursi himself admits that there are things beyond our understanding, and that people should not be upset by their inability to grasp things completely. Given this, we will let him have the final word; although he is talking about the inability of human reason to comprehend fully the truths and realities of bodily resurrection after death, he might just as easily have been describing the limitations we face when trying to understand the precise nature of the phenomenon we call existence. To those of you who are studying this treatise with an open mind, I would say this: do not complain that you cannot immediately grasp the matter in all its details, and do not be saddened by your failure to understand it completely. For even a master of philosophy such as Ibn Sina said that resurrection cannot be understood by rational criteria alone. His judgement was that we must believe in resurrection, but that reason cannot aid our belief. Similarly, all the scholars of Islam unanimously have held that resurrection rests entirely on traditional proofs; it cannot be examined rationally. Naturally, so profound, and at the same time, so exalted a path cannot suddenly become a public highway for the exercise of the reason. But we should offer a thousand thanks that the Merciful Creator has bestowed upon us this much of the path, by means of the effulgence of the All-Wise Quran and His own mercy, in an age when belief by imitation is past and meek acceptance has disappeared. For the amount vouchsafed to each of us is enough for the salvation of our faith. Being content with the amount that we have been able to understand, we should revisit what we have read and seek to increase our comprehension.92

94

Chapter Three On Nature and Causation Introduction

Causation, or, more precisely, the necessity and efficacy of the causal nexus, is the subject of one of the most vigorously contested debates in the history of Muslim theological and philosophical thought. When fire touches paper, and paper ignites, is the fire the cause of the ignition, or is the effect – namely the flames which consume the paper – produced directly by God?1 The Ash’arite theologians were arguably the first to deny the existence of a necessary connection between cause and effect independently of God, who, as ‘Causer of causes’ (musabbib al-asbāb), they argued, creates all effects directly. Later, Ghazālī championed the Ash’arite cause in his anti-Peripatetic tract, Tahāfut al-falāsifa. Predating David Hume by several centuries, but for distinctly different reasons, Ghazālī proposed that the network of cause and effect of which we are all part is in fact only apparent: it is a human construct created out of the habit we have of linking events which always appear to occur together, such as the striking of the match, the touching of the match to paper, the ignition of the paper and its subsequent consumption by the flames. Ghazālī argued that to claim that the fire is the real cause of the paper’s being reduced to ashes is to cast a slur on God’s omnipotence and sovereignty. If causes actually possess the potency and duration needed to bring an effect into being, the role of God becomes virtually redundant, and His status is reduced to that of ‘First Cause’ or ‘Prime Mover’ in the truly Peripatetic sense of the term, with a nominal sovereignty similar to that of modern-day constitutional monarchs, who are kings and queens of all they survey in name alone.2 Said Nursi’s approach to the question of causation appears to be informed to a certain extent by the teachings of the Ash’arite theologians and Ghazālī, whose attack on Peripatetic philosophy was articulated to a certain extent in their own language and on their terms. Nursi’s motivation, too, was something that he shared with his ideological predecessor. Unlike the Ash’arites, whose sole objective seems to have been their desire to save Divine sovereignty from the onslaught of the philosophers, Ghazālī’s endeavours – including his debunking of the Peripatetics – were underpinned by a resolute intention to revive true belief among the Muslim masses. Eight centuries later, Nursi was moved to echo Ghazālī’s

95

The Qur’an Revealed  teachings on causation for almost identical reasons. By Nursi’s time, of course, the goalposts had now changed, and the old adversary of Peripatetic philosophy had been joined by what Nursi claimed was one of its ideological descendants, scientific materialism. Founded on the premise of causal efficacy, scientific materialism was believed by Nursi to be the major threat to the belief of Muslims at the outset of the twentieth century. His rejection of the claims of scientific materialism runs like a thread throughout the Risale, but finds its most vigorous expression in a treatise he wrote in the 1920s entitled Treatise On Nature (Tabiat Risalesi). The main focus of the work is Nursi’s rejection of the notion that material beings can give existence to other material beings, or, to use the language of science and philosophy, that ‘causes’ can actually bring about ‘effects’. And it is this treatise which forms the basis for discussion in the present chapter.3

Historical background to Nursi’s Treatise on Nature

By Nursi’s own admission, the decision to write the Treatise on Nature was fuelled by his reaction to what he considered to be the dangerous current of atheistic materialism which was taking hold of Ottoman society in the opening decades of the twentieth century. When I went to Ankara in 1922, the morale of the people of belief was extremely high as a result of the victory of the army of Islam over the Greeks. But I saw that an abominable current of atheism was treacherously trying to subvert, poison and destroy their minds. “O God!” I said, “this monster is going to harm the fundamentals of belief.” At that point...I wrote a treatise in Arabic consisting of a proof taken from the All-Wise Quran that was powerful enough to disperse and destroy that atheistic current. I had it printed in Ankara, but, alas, those who knew Arabic were few and those who considered it seriously were rare. Also, its argument was in an extremely concise and abbreviated form. As a result, the treatise did not have the effect it should have done and sadly, that current of atheism both swelled and gained strength.4

In 1934, Nursi revisited the Treatise on Nature and wrote a summary of it in Turkish. Introducing the work, he elaborates on the rationale behind its composition. What occasioned the writing of this treatise were the attacks being made on the Quran by those who called everything that their corrupted minds could not reach a superstition, who were using ‘nature’ to justify unbelief, and were vilifying the truths of belief in a most aggressive and ugly fashion. This treatise explains through nine ‘Impossibilities’, themselves comprising at least ninety impossibilities, just how unreasonable, crude and superstitious is the way taken by those naturalists who are atheists. One wonders how those famous and supposedly brilliant philosophers have been able to accept such a blatantly obvious superstition, and continue to pursue that way. Well, the fact is they could not see its reality. And I am ready to explain in detail and prove through clear and decisive arguments to whoever doubts it that these crude, repugnant and unreasonable impossibilities are the necessary and unavoidable result of their way; in fact, the very gist of their creed.5

The ‘creed’ to which Nursi refers here is the atheistic rationalism of the new secular forces which, having taken control of the Ottoman Empire, were beginning to subject religion and

96

  On Nature and Causation religious faith to attack. Buttressing this new creed were the principles of ‘scientism’,6 which bestows absolute epistemological primacy upon science and advocates the application of scientific theory and methods in all fields of enquiry about the world, including areas – such as morality, ethics and religion – which, its detractors claim, are outside its remit. At the heart of scientism lies the acceptance of the necessity of the causal nexus and the ubiquitous yet ethereal and elusive ‘laws of nature’, producing an ideological position which appears to repudiate all attempts to define the universe in any terms apart from the material. For the scientistically-minded scientist or philosopher, the efficacy of causes and the primacy of ‘natural processes’ are taken as givens, and all subsequent discourse is circumscribed by those unquestioned assumptions. Any attempt to bring God into the equation in any serious discussion with advocates of scientism is thus stymied from the outset by the uncontested premises on which materialist science is founded. Nursi, now the ‘New Said’, rejected the philosophical substructure of secular modern science, mired as he believed it was in a stark materialism that relied solely on sense perception, leaving no place for metaphysical speculation or belief in the supra-material. The view of the ‘New Said’ was that for the purveyors of modern science, the ‘natural world’ is something that is to be manipulated and controlled rather than deliberated upon and used as a means of recognising the transcendent. For the secular scientist, the universe is worthy of study only for the benefits that may accrue to man, who sits at its centre. To the secular scientific eye, the world indicates nothing but itself: it refers to itself and to itself alone, with no meaning other than that which can be gleaned from it through observation, enquiry and the mediation of the senses. And since secular modern science recognises no connection between the cosmos and a transcendent Source of all being, it sees the things it studies as being what Nursi termed ‘self-referential’ (ismī) rather than ‘Other-indicative’ (h. arf ī).7 Nursi did not object to science – if by science we mean the attempt to understand the relationship between the objects of scientific study, namely, the constituent parts of the cosmos. What Nursi objected to was the way that science was being used, the premises upon which scientific endeavour was undertaken, and what he believed were the wholly fallacious claims that were being made on its behalf. For those claims posed a direct threat to religious belief – a threat which Nursi was unable to ignore. Thus in emphasising the inability of causes or nature to create, Nursi is not merely trying to prove a theological point for the sake of it. For the Muslim theologians and philosophers of the medieval era, the issue of causality was a staple of their intellectual diet, and it is impossible to gauge the impact of early theological debates outside the seminaries. The architects of theological orthodoxy guarded their construct vigilantly, but one gets the impression that their main concern was polemic theology and the preservation of correct doctrine in the seminaries rather than in the streets. As far as we can tell from the writings of those engaged in these debates, there was little interest among scholars in popular religion, and the beliefs of the masses were mentioned only in the context of repudiation of ignorance and superstition among the Muslim ‘laity’. As a result, hardly anything is known about how ordinary Muslims received and understood the issues debated so vigorously by the various schools of theological thought. In Nursi’s time, however, ignorance and superstition were no longer the only causes for concern: a new variable had been added to the equation in the form of the spread of overtly materialistic and atheistic ideas among the Muslims, which

97

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi saw as a clear danger to their faith. While medieval Muslim society was not devoid of its naturalists, the impact of their doctrines on the Muslim masses was minimal. By Nursi’s time, however, materialistic naturalism had become one of the most prevalent and invasive doctrines of the day, and its effects were being felt all over the Muslim world. The dangers presented by these encroaching ideologies were perceived as being far greater than those which existed in the writings of the Muslim philosophers of the medieval period, whose works and ideas circulated among the scholarly but rarely percolated down to the ‘Muslim in the street’. Thus Nursi’s work on causation should be seen not as some arid theological exercise designed to score points over rival theologians but as a serious response to a problem which, he believed, posed a very real danger to the faith of ordinary Muslim believers everywhere. We are now ready to engage with Nursi’s discourse on causation, but before we do, we ought to bear in mind that the Risale-i Nur was always, and in some respects still is, a ‘work in progress’, and different treatises reflect the ebbs and flows of Nursi’s own personal intellectual and spiritual development over time. This is true particularly of his scientific view of the universe. Despite having studied science, Nursi was not a scientist and did not write as one: his concern was not with the subjects of scientific study but the philosophical principles which underpinned them. Furthermore, while Nursi’s study of the natural sciences in his youth may have led him to develop a Newtonian mechanistic view of the universe, it was not one that he retained for very long. When the ‘Old Said’ departed, many of his old ideas departed too: with regard to science and scientific endeavour, the ‘New Said’ developed an uncompromisingly Quranic view of the universe, which on numerous levels is antithetical to the Newtonian model. Nursi’s Treatise on Nature, written in the early Twenties at the time of the emergence of the ‘New Said’, is the product of a thinker who, disillusioned by many of his old ideas, was working gradually towards an all-embracing and unequivocally Quranic approach to creation. And it is in the light of this that it should be read and understood.

Nursi’s statement of the problem: nature – cause or effect? It is important for us to be aware that there are various phrases in common use today which imply unbelief. Paradoxically, believers often utter them too, but without really grasping their implications. We shall discuss three of the most important of them in this treatise. The first: “Causes create this.” The second: “It forms itself; it comes into existence and later ceases to exist.” The third: “It is natural; nature necessitates and creates it.” Now, it is an undeniable fact that beings exist. And not only do they exist, but they also come into existence in a way that betokens wisdom and artistry. Furthermore, each being is immersed in time and space and is thus subject to continuous renewal. Given this, there are a limited number of possible explanations that can be given to account for its existence. Three of these are covered by the phrases mentioned above, and are favoured by those who are unwilling or unable to see the truth. The first explanation is that ‘causes’ in the world come together to create beings; the second is that each being forms itself; and the third is that all beings are the necessary effect of ‘nature’ and ‘natural processes’.

98

  On Nature and Causation There is, of course, a fourth explanation, namely that all beings are created through the all-encompassing power of God. And since reason can countenance no possible explanation apart from one of these four, if the first three are proven to be absurd and invalid, then the fourth – the way of Divine Unity – will self-evidently and of necessity be proven true.8

Nursi’s Treatise on Nature rests on his refutation of a series of propositions which are, he says, ‘commonly used and imply unbelief ’. Each of these propositions lies at the heart of a particular ‘way’ – a path, Nursi declares, which is indicative of unbelief. These include: the notion that causes create; the assertion that things form themselves; and the assumption that beings exist because ‘nature’ has created them. Furthermore, he adds, such propositions are sometimes forwarded by believers, who fail to understand the implications of their own words. By invoking, among other things, various forms of the teleological argument, and by employing the kind of dialectic championed by Ghazālī in his refutation of the philosophers some seven centuries earlier, Nursi takes each proposition in turn and attempts to demonstrate what he considers to be the bankruptcy of these three central planks of naturalist-atheist belief in causation – his ultimate goal being to show that once reason has rejected these three ‘ways’, it has no option but to accept the fourth way: the way of Divine unity. Before we discuss in depth how Nursi approaches these three ‘ways’, it is important to be clear about the terms he uses. For at first glance, the three propositions – ‘causes create’; ‘things form themselves’; and ‘nature is responsible’ – appear to be saying more or less the same thing. What is the difference between causes creating an effect and things forming themselves? And how are these different to the notion that nature is responsible for the existence of beings? Precisely how Nursi understood the first proposition, namely that ‘causes create’, obviously depends on how he understood the notion of a ‘cause’. The definition of the word ‘cause’ has been contested since it first appeared in the philosophical debates of the ancients, and remains so today; indeed, the role of causes and causality differs according to the field of knowledge within which it is being discussed. The classical philosophical approach, typified by Aristotle’s ‘fourfold nature of causation’ theory, is not necessarily that of the modern scientific community, particularly those whose enquiries take them into the rather exotic and at times seemingly acausal world of quantum physics – a world with which, writing in the early 1920s, Nursi would not have been familiar. Given that his formative years had been spent in the study of both classical philosophy and the natural sciences, Nursi would obviously have had a good grasp of Aristotelian causality, particularly bearing in mind its impact on the worldview of the Muslim Neo-Platonic philosophers, with whose teachings he would have been well acquainted. And it is abundantly clear from his writings that he aware of the Newtonian model of the universe. In the context of his Treatise on Nature, we may understand Nursi’s use of the word ‘cause’ (sabab) as indicating what Aristotle would have described as an ‘efficient cause’, that is, the thing which brings about the existence of another thing. To use a modern definition, ‘cause’ as portrayed by Nursi in the first proposition signifies ‘a necessary and sufficient preceding condition’ for the coming into existence of another being, i.e. the ‘effect’.9 With regard to the second proposition, namely that beings form themselves, it is clear from his dismissal of the ‘Second Way’ that he is not talking about beings bringing

99

The Qur’an Revealed  themselves into existence from non-existence; rather, he is alluding to the notion that parts may come together of their own accord to form a whole, such as various cells and nerves choosing freely to unite in order to ‘create’ the organ of vision we know as the eye. That he is not alluding to any scientific belief in the possibility of entities emerging from absolute nothingness is borne out by the fact that even as far as God’s creative act is concerned, Nursi does not hold with the notion of creatio ex nihilo – creation from nothing – in the literal sense of the term. While the proposition ‘things form themselves’ is not at all dissimilar to the proposition ‘causes create’, Nursi’s explication of the impossibilities involved in this ‘Second Way’ deals more with the notion of creation and formation on the micro level than with the notion of causality as a general principle. The third proposition, which holds that ‘nature’ is responsible for the creation of beings – which are then deemed ‘natural’ – looks at causation from a markedly different perspective. The first proposition was that ‘causes create’, while the third attributes creation to ‘nature’. While there seems to be a considerable amount of conceptual overlap between these two ‘ways’, there is a tangible difference between them, and Nursi, given the grounding he had in classical philosophy, must have been well aware of this. The word t. abī‘a – ‘nature’ – was a much utilised term in classical Muslim philosophy. For Ibn Sina, as for many of the Neo-Platonists, t. abī‘a signified the ‘essential first principle’ for the essential movement of that in which it was present; in other words, the ‘nature’ of a thing was necessary for every essential change and every essential instance of persistence.10 This definition is Aristotelian to the core. Ibn Sina also describes t. abī‘a as a ‘cause’ (sabab), for it is an essential principle of motion to that in which it inheres; he also describes it as a certain ‘force’ by means of which the forms and acts of beings are preserved for a finite period of time. In general, the theologians understood t. abī‘a as defined by the philosophers to mean the ‘natural disposition’ of a being which determines its form and behaviour. Thus t. abī‘a was viewed by the theologians as a term used by the philosophers to describe a ‘natural’ casual agency which brings into existence the real phenomena of the cosmos. It is little wonder, then, that since it implied ‘natural causation’ – as opposed to the direct origination of beings by God – the concept of t. abī‘a was rejected by most theologians. One may argue, then, that in the eyes of the vast majority of Muslim theologians, while the notion of t. abī‘a differs considerably from the notion of ‘cause’ as identified in the first proposition above, for all intents and purposes it is the equivalent of causation. For the theologians, that which the philosophers described as ‘nature’ was described instead as ‘custom’ (‘āda). The regularity and predictability of cosmic phenomena, the theologians argue, is not the result of any innate disposition that has the power to create and sustain; rather, God creates certain events in succession to other events, and has also created in us the ability to recognise recurrence and the continuance of ‘custom’. Thus it is, for example, that fire always burns or frogs do not suddenly turn into princes. Fire always burns not because it has any innate ‘nature’ or ‘disposition’ to do so, but because God creates the fire and the burning of the object consumed by flames together as part of his creative ‘custom’. The Muslim Neo-Platonist notion of t. abī‘a, which has its origins in Aristotelian thought, is virtually one and the same with the Western philosophical notion of nature – a

100

  On Nature and Causation word derived from the Latin natura, meaning ‘essential qualities’ or ‘innate disposition’. The word natura was in turn a translation of the Greek φύσις (physis), which referred to the innate characteristics within beings which allowed them to develop of their own accord. The term ‘nature’ is still used in this sense today, with everything apart from human artefacts being deemed by secular scientists as ‘natural’, i.e. the result of innate causal processes that require no ‘supernatural’ explanation. However, while it would be undoubtedly interesting to know precisely how Nursi understands the terms ‘cause’ and ‘nature’, ultimately it is of little consequence. In Nursian parlance, ‘cause’ or ‘nature’ can be understood to represent anything ‘other than God’ to which creation or the giving of existence is attributed. What is important for Nursi is that it be established beyond all doubt that the only agent capable of bestowing existence on anything is God, and that anything ‘other than God’ – be it ‘cause’ or ‘nature’ – is, by default, incapable of creating in any sense of the word, be it ‘from nothing’ or from a pre-existing substratum of matter.

The First Way

The first way, Nursi says, is to imagine that beings are formed and brought into existence through the coming together of various causes. He says that this way involves numerous impossibilities, three of which he examines at length. First impossibility Imagine a pharmacy stocked with numerous jars and phials, each filled with a different substance. Then imagine an equally vast number of potions, each one comprising different ingredients taken from the jars and phials in the pharmacy and made into an effective medicinal compound to treat a particular ailment. If we examine each of the potions, we see that the ingredients have been taken in different but extremely precise amounts from each of the jars and phials – one gram from this, three grams from that, seven grams from the next, and so on. It is clear that if too much or too little of a certain ingredient had been used, the potion would have been spoiled and the medication would have been ineffective: for a medicine to have its full effect, the weighing and measuring of the ingredients of which it is comprised must be extremely precise, and even the slightest deviation from the recipe is likely to render it useless. Now imagine that the jars and phials in our hypothetical pharmacy are more than fifty in number, and that one certain potion has been made by taking different amounts from each of them. Is it in any way possible that the potion in question could have been made as a result of a complete accident? Imagine, for example, that a sudden gust of wind has knocked over the jars, spilling some of their contents onto the ground. How likely is it that the potion in question might have been formed from the accidental joining together of those spilt substances, in the exact yet vastly differing measures and amounts needed to produce an effective remedy? Is belief in such a likelihood not absurd and superstitious? Yet many are prepared to believe equally impossible things with regard to the existence of living beings, each of which may be likened to the potion in our example. For

101

The Qur’an Revealed  each living being is composed of matter that has been taken in the most precise measures imaginable from an unimaginably large variety of different substances. And to attribute the creation of living beings to causes is as absurd as it is to claim that the potion in the pharmacy came into existence through the accidental spillage of substances from the jars and phials. In short, the vital substances which comprise the vast pharmacy that is the cosmos, and which are measured out with the utmost precision on the scales of Divine Determining and Decree, can come into existence only through the boundless wisdom, infinite knowledge and all-encompassing will of One Who is Pre-Eternal and All-Wise. To claim that they are the work of countless blind causes, or that the life-giving potion somehow concocted itself when the phials were knocked over, is to claim the nonsensical. Indeed, it is an act of denial founded on nothing but absurdity.11

In his explication of the first ‘impossibility’, Nursi invokes a form of ‘argument from design’ – one of the classical arguments for the existence of God which relies on the identification of various features of the world as evidence that the world is the work not of randomly interacting causes but of a Creator acting with wisdom, knowledge and purpose.12 Nursi first asks us to imagine a medicinal concoction that is made up of more than fifty different ingredients of varying proportions, compounded by an expert pharmacist with the express purpose of producing an effective cure for a particular ailment. The purpose of the concoction is to provide a cure, and the efficacy of the cure depends on the care taken by the pharmacist in measuring out and weighing with the utmost skill and precision the various ingredients involved. Having established that the concoction is a result of the volitional act of an expert pharmacist, working to a precise recipe and for an express purpose, Nursi then asks us to consider the possibility that such a concoction might have come into existence not at the hands of the pharmacist but through the random interplay of ‘blind causes’ – in this case, through the accidental spillage of ingredients from their jars and phials on the pharmacy shelves. Nursi’s view is that to believe in the possibility of such an occurrence would be to believe in the absurd. It would be as absurd as believing that a row of welldesigned and expertly built houses could come into existence as the result of an explosion in a brick factory, or that an open box containing tens of thousands of tiny plastic letters could be thrown up in the air with great force and, when landing on the floor, arrange themselves perfectly into Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Nursi then draws an analogy between the medicinal concoction and a living being. Given, he says, that it is far more complex in every respect than a relatively simple substance compounded in a pharmacy, to imagine that a living being might be the work of ‘countless blind causes’ is equally as absurd. Carrying the analogy even further, Nursi likens the whole of the cosmos to a vast pharmacy filled with ‘vital substances’, the creation of which bears the hallmarks not of blind causes or spontaneous self-generation, but of One who possesses, among other things, absolute and all-encompassing knowledge, wisdom and will. Nursi’s design argument is not dissimilar in tenor to the famous ‘watchmaker analogy’, a teleological argument for the existence of God put forward by a number of pre-modern philosophers, including Voltaire and Descartes. The most famous version, however, was formulated by the British philosopher-cleric, William Paley (1743-1805). In short, Paley’s

102

  On Nature and Causation argument was that if a pocket watch is found in a field, it is logical to presume not only that someone had dropped it there, but also, given its complexity, that it had been designed by someone for an express purpose, namely for telling the time. Paley then draws an analogy between the pocket watch and the natural world, pointing out that since the complexity of living beings is far greater than that of the pocket watch, the argument that they must be the work of a designer is considerably more compelling. Criticisms of the design argument have not been few in number. David Hume (171176), for example, attacked the design argument on two fronts. Firstly, he rejected the analogy between known human artefacts –such as a pocket watch – and the natural world, claiming that their obvious difference prevents any inference that they are similar effects which have similar causes. For example, he says that if we see a house, it is easy to conclude that it is the work of an architect or a builder because this is exactly the kind of effect that, owing to prior experience, we expect to issue forth from that kind of cause. The universe, however, is not so similar to a house that we are able, with the same certainty, to conclude that it has a similar cause. In order for us to justify any claims about the causes of the natural world, Hume says, we would need to have experienced the creation of a number of different natural worlds. It is precisely because we do not have such experience that we cannot justify the claim that the natural world – the cosmos – is the product of design in the same way that the house is. Secondly, Hume argues, even if we are able to draw a credible analogy between the natural world and human artefacts such as the pocket watch, and then conclude that they have similar causes, this would not necessarily point to the existence of a creator who possesses attributes of perfection. It could be, he says, that there is a creator, but one who is not perfectly wise or perfectly good. Furthermore, it would not even prove that the creator is one: it may well be that the natural world is the work of a plurality of deities, just as a house is the work of a number of different craftsmen. In drawing an analogy between a medicinal concoction and a living being, Nursi is at first glance open to the kind of criticisms that were levelled at the design argument by Hume and other critics. When studied closely and evaluated in the context of the discourse in which it is embedded, however, it becomes clear that Nursi’s argument should not be confused with the argument from simple analogy, which is the kind of argument that came under fire from Hume. Nursi’s is a more sophisticated design argument and arguably avoids Hume’s rejection of the analogy between human artefacts and the natural world of living beings. Nursi’s argument, unlike arguments from simple analogy, does not depend on a premise which asserts that there is only a general resemblance between the two objects he is discussing. What matters for Nursi is that the medicinal concoction and the living being both possess features which indicate the presence of design. Regardless of how similar or dissimilar they may be to each other, both the concoction and the living being are characterised by the kind of complexity that warrants the inference that it is the result of something or someone possessing power, knowledge, will and purpose. With regard to the first part of Hume’s second criticism, Nursi makes light work of rejecting the notion of a plurality of deities in numerous arguments throughout the Risale, and since it is beyond the scope of this chapter to reproduce those arguments here, the reader may refer back to Chapter One and the discussion on Divine unity in order to understand

103

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi’s approach to the issue. However, the second part of Hume’s second criticism is not without justification. Even if the design argument is able to convince us that the cosmos has a designer, this does not mean that the said designer is necessarily all perfect or all good. While Nursi would no doubt counter this with a raft of ‘proofs’ to the contrary, it may be argued that he would probably agree to an extent with the underlying premise of Hume’s statement. What Hume is saying is that even if the design argument points to the existence of a creator, it can in reality say very little about the exact nature of that creator over and above the fact that he, she or it designs. Nursi, of course, might object again on the grounds that the designs we see betoken a number of attributes of perfection, but it is likely that he would concur with Hume in what the philosopher actually seems to be implying, which is that as a stand-alone argument, the argument from design is of limited utility, and needs to be augmented by various other arguments and proofs if a more rounded and authentic picture of the Creator is to be built up. What is striking about Nursi’s argument from design is not only that it is convincing - albeit within its own frame of reference – but also that it sheds more light on what we discussed in the introduction to this chapter as the tensions which exist between the ‘selfreferential’ (ismī) and ‘Other-indicative’ (h. arf ī) approaches to creation. That Nursi should see no difference between a medicinal concoction and a living being insofar as their being in need of a designer and originator is concerned shows the extent of his ‘Other-indicative’ understanding of existence. Conversely, the fact that, in the tradition of the materialist philosophers, we post-Enlightenment moderns are used to seeing design in human artefacts but not in flies or trees or galaxies, which we explain away as ‘natural’, shows the extent to which we have severed the connection between this world and the transcendent and become habituated to seeing everything as ‘self-referential’.13 Second impossibility If things are attributed not to one All-Powerful God but to causes, it follows on that many, if not all, of the elements and causes present in the universe should intervene in the being of every animate creature. However, the coming together of mutually opposing causes of their own accord, in a completely harmonious and orderly way, in the body of a tiny being such as a fly, for instance, is clearly an impossibility. For the tiny body of the fly is connected in various ways with many of the elements and causes in the cosmos; in fact, it is like a microcosm of them. If, therefore, we do not attribute the creation of the fly directly to the Pre-Eternal, All-Powerful One, we have no choice but to attribute it to those material causes, all of which would need to be present in the vicinity of the fly in order to create and sustain it. In fact, not only would they have to be present inside the fly’s body, but they would also have to penetrate each and every cell that goes to make up the tiny creature. Given the interdependence of all causes and effects, to attribute the creation of the fly to other than God would necessitate the physical presence of all of the elements and constituent parts of the cosmos in each of the fly’s cells - an absurd notion that would put even the most obdurate of the sophists to shame.14

In the first part of Nursi’s explanation of the ‘Second Impossibility’, he says that to attribute the existence of beings to causes poses something of a paradox. In the absence of an All-

104

  On Nature and Causation Powerful Creator, and given the interdependence of all things in the cosmos – the fact that all things are inextricably linked on a seemingly countless number of levels – it must be that most, if not all, of the causal agents in existence are busy in the creation and maintenance of the world at any one moment. However, if causal agents are possessed of volition, knowledge, power and wisdom – which surely they must be if they are to contribute to the creation of a world that bears the imprint of such attributes – why should they deign to cooperate with each other in such an orderly and harmonious manner? In the absence of a Creator, power and autonomy must surely be in the hands of the numerous causal agents that are claimed to be at work in the cosmos. Yet in agreeing to join together in order to give existence to other beings, they act as though they are under constraint, with neither power nor autonomy to exercise as their own. A short excursus into the mysteries of chemical bonding may serve to better to illustrate Nursi’s point. The element sodium is a silver-coloured metal that reacts so vigorously with water that flames are produced whenever sodium gets wet. The element chlorine is a greenish-coloured gas so poisonous that it was used as a weapon during the First World War. When bonded chemically, however, these two volatile substances form sodium chloride, also known as common table salt – a compound so safe that we use it on a daily basis. Basic chemistry primers tell us that a chemical bond is what holds atoms together so that they are able to form the more complicated aggregates that we know as molecules and extended solids. Chemists talk about bonds all the time, and in chemistry texts they are often represented by little sticks that join together the spheres which symbolise atoms in a plastic molecular model. It is hardly surprising therefore, that we should think of chemical bonds as ‘things’ which possess external existence. However, since no-one has ever actually seen a chemical bond, there is no reason to believe that they really exist as physical objects. A chemical bond is, by the admission of chemists themselves, a figment of the imagination – a convenient fiction, if you will, that serves to explain a real process, namely the means whereby certain atoms join together in order to form new structures with unique physical and chemical properties. We now know that there are two main types of chemical bonding: ionic bonding and covalent bonding. In ionic bonding, electrons are transferred completely from one atom to another. In the process of either losing or gaining negatively charged electrons, the reacting atoms form ions. The oppositely charged ions are ‘attracted’ to each other by electrostatic forces, which are the basis of the ionic bond. During the reaction of sodium with chlorine, sodium loses its one valence electron to chlorine, resulting in a positively charged sodium ion and a negatively charged chlorine ion. When sodium loses its one valence electron, it shrinks in size; when chlorine gains an additional valence electron, it grows larger. Once the reaction has taken place, the charged sodium and chlorine ions are held together by electrostatic forces and form an ionic bond, resulting in the compound we know as sodium chloride, or table salt. Ionic compounds such as sodium chloride have a number of features in common. For example, ionic bonds form between metals and non-metals, and when they are named, the metal is always first and the non-metal second, e.g. sodium chloride. Ionic compounds dissolve easily in water and, when in solution, conduct electricity with ease. They also tend to form crystalline solids with high melting temperatures.

105

The Qur’an Revealed  The fact that ionic compounds are solids is a result of the intermolecular forces which hold them together. If we consider a solid crystal of sodium chloride, for example, we see that the solid is made up of many positively charged sodium ions and an equal number of negatively charged chlorine ions: each sodium ion is attracted equally to all of its neighbouring chlorine ions, while each chlorine ion is attracted in similar fashion to all of its neighbouring sodium ions. The paradox highlighted in the first part of Nursi’s ‘Second Impossibility’ should now be clear. With regard to the coming into existence of sodium chloride, the key factor – although clearly not the only factor – is the reaction which takes place when sodium and chlorine bond chemically. That the formation of sodium chloride is a purposeful act is hard to deny; similarly, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to deny that the creation of such a being requires power, knowledge and volition: after all, Nursi has already shown that anything which exhibits ingenuity, purpose and design cannot be the work of that which is powerless, ignorant and constrained. Yet if we remove from the equation an All-Powerful and Omniscient Creator and attribute the bringing into existence of sodium chloride to causal agents, we have no option but to attribute knowledge, power and volition to the sodium and chloride, which, with an apparently fine-tuned sense of purpose, choose to come together in order to create a completely new structure. And given the interdependence of all the constituent parts of the cosmos, in order for causal agents to bring into existence beings which have relations with all other entities in the cosmos, they need to possess the ability not only to bring a single being into existence, but also a knowledge vast enough to give it all that it requires in order for it to interact efficiently with all the other beings in the cosmos with which it has a relationship. In short, to be able to ‘create’ sodium chloride, both sodium and chlorine would need to possess power, knowledge and volition in almost infinite abundance, together with a sense of purpose and an all-encompassing awareness of the whole causal nexus of which sodium chloride will be part. For Nursi, this is obviously fraught with difficulties, not least because it is impossible to imagine exactly why two agents apparently possessed of power, knowledge and free-will would be ready to give up their autonomy and, in joining together, ‘sacrifice’ their own independent identities in order to bring into being a completely new substance. If causes are autonomous and able to do as they wish, why would they choose freely to subjugate themselves to one another and, in so doing, annihilate themselves in the creation of a new being? In the second part of the ‘Second Impossibility’, Nursi argues that to attribute the creation of beings to anything other than the ‘Pre-Eternal, All-Powerful’ One is to posit an infinite regress of material causes, which he claims is irrational and thus untenable. Using the example of the fly, he says that if we do not attribute its creation directly to God, the causal agents involved in the creation of a single cell of the fly’s body would not only have to be infinite in number, but they would also have to be physically present in the being of the fly itself – an obvious absurdity. Even if we were to imagine that each cell of the fly’s body had but a single material cause, each of those causes would in turn require other causes to bring them into existence, and each of those causes too would require causal agents to bestow upon them being. Given the impossibility – on the non-quantum level, at least - of ‘action at a distance’, and bearing in mind that a material ‘cause’ must be contiguous to its

106

  On Nature and Causation effect in order for the latter to come about, it soon becomes clear that if each of the material causes requires another material cause for its existence, a single cell in the body of the fly would require as many causes for its being as there are in the cosmos.15 Third impossibility There is an established philosophical principle which says that, “If a being displays unity, this shows that it is has issued from a single source, from one hand.” 16 This is particularly true of a living being which functions with perfect order and harmony: such a being clearly cannot be the work of numerous hands, and must be attributed to One – and One alone – Who is all-powerful and all-wise. Indeed, to attribute the creation of such a being to the clumsy hand of ‘natural causes’ - insubstantial entities which are blind, deaf, unconscious and devoid of knowledge or wisdom, and whose deficiencies are compounded to the extent that they collaborate with each other – is as unreasonable as accepting innumerable impossibilities all at once. Even if we were to turn a blind eye to this impossibility and accept that material causes can produce effects, these could come about only through direct contact and touch. However, ‘natural causes’ can touch only the exteriors of living beings and are unable to reach or penetrate their interiors, which are often considerably more delicate, elegant and perfectly formed than their exteriors. Therefore, tiny creatures, whose exteriors – let alone their interiors – cannot be produced by the hands of material causes are more aweinspiring as regards the subtlety of their art and creation than the largest creatures; to attribute their existence to the lifeless, unknowing, chaotic causes that make up ‘nature’ can result only from wilful ignorance as vast as the cosmos itself.17

In this ‘Third Impossibility’, Nursi focuses on the notion of interior harmony, a feature that is particularly evident in living beings. The proportion, scale and balance evident in the various parts of the human eye, for example, are such that they are able to work together for a particular purpose, which in this case is for the eye to function properly. The structures and systems in the eye, as in all organs and living beings, appear too finely attuned with each other and too sensitively balanced to be the product of the chance encounter of numerous inanimate, purposeless material causes. A being which exhibits harmony in this way, Nursi argues, must be the work of a single Creator alone, and One Who possesses both infinite power and infinite wisdom. A being which bears the stamp of unity on account of the harmony and balance of its constituent parts can issue forth only from One Who possesses unity and Whose knowledge and power embrace the whole of the created realm. Harmony by its very nature presupposes knowledge, power and wisdom, and these cannot be attributed in any meaningful sense to material agents or the ‘forces’ of nature, which lack the wherewithal to effect something which is clearly so harmoniously and purposefully fashioned. Nursi’s reasoning here is not dissimilar to the ‘argument from harmony’ of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas begins with the observation that ‘natural’ objects which lack knowledge frequently operate in harmony so as to obtain the best possible result. Since this is the case, they must be working towards a particular goal or end, and on purpose rather than by chance. However, since they lack knowledge, one may conclude that they are being guided by someone who does have knowledge. For Aquinas, the only being capable of directing all objects in existence towards

107

The Qur’an Revealed  their goals is God. However, Nursi’s objective here is to prove not that God exists but that God is One, and that the creation of beings which display harmony cannot in any way, shape or form be attributed to the work of countless disparate material causes.

The Second Way

The second way is characterised by the belief that “things form themselves”.18 This is a notion, Nursi believes, that involves countless impossibilities, three of which he duly outlines. First impossibility To those who reject the truth, I would say this. Egotism engenders obduracy and denial of reality, and renders one capable of accepting a hundred impossibilities all at once. For you are not an inanimate object: you are a living being. You are like an extremely well-ordered machine that is being renewed at every instant, or a wondrous palace that is undergoing continuous change. Particles are working unceasingly in your body, which enjoys mutual relations with all other beings in the cosmos, particularly with regard to sustenance and the perpetuation of the species. Furthermore, these particles function with the utmost precision, mindful of the relationship you enjoy with the rest of the cosmos and careful not to impair or sever that connection. With regard for the bond between you and other beings, they embark on their tasks with great caution, as though taking the whole of the universe into account. And you are the one who benefits, materially and spiritually, as a result of the positions they take up in order to carry out their tasks. If you do not accept that the particles at work in your body are an army of tiny officials which function in accordance with the law decreed by One Who is Pre-Eternal and All-Powerful, or that each particle is a point inscribed by the pen of Divine determining, then you must be prepared to accept the impossible. You must be prepared to accept that in every particle of your eye, for example, there is another tiny eye that is able to see not only every limb and organ of your body, but also the rest of the cosmos, with which you are inextricably connected. Furthermore, you must be ready to ascribe to each particle the intelligence of as many geniuses as it would take to provide in-depth knowledge of your entire past and future, your ancestors and descendants, the origins of all of the elements which contribute to your physical being, and the sources of all your sustenance. You would need to attribute the knowledge and consciousness of a thousand sages like Plato to every single particle of your being – a notion as ridiculous as it is superstitious.19

Nursi’s argument in this ‘First Impossibility’ is informed by his conviction that the cosmos in general, and biological life in particular, is underpinned by connectivity, interdependency and symbiosis. Each cell in the eye, for example, is connected to all other cells in the eye: the eye as an organ is dependent on its cells, which in turn are interdependent, functioning together to produce a harmonious whole. The eye, for its part, enjoys numerous connections with the rest of the organs of the body, in a relationship again characterised by interdependence and symbiosis. And the human body as a whole is connected with the rest of the creation through a vast network of different, mutually beneficial and harmonious relationships. The fact that all things are inextricably linked means that the various particles which go to make up the eye, for example, or those particles which pass through the body

108

  On Nature and Causation in the form of different nutrients needed for survival, are either in the employ of One with absolute knowledge, vision and power, or are themselves each possessed of such attributes. For as Nursi points out, the particles which serve our bodies do so with the utmost care and precision, providing us with all of the things that we need to sustain the numerous relationships we have with countless other beings in the cosmos, in a way that would seem to betoken an all-encompassing knowledge not only of the limited system in which they work – our eye, for example, or our blood stream – but of all of the systems in the cosmos to which we are connected. That which is key here is Nursi’s emphasis on the interdependence of all the constituent parts of the cosmos. Given this, it is as though each particle which acts in a particular part is simultaneously aware of the whole, and is functioning accordingly in order to serve those purposes which look to the whole and not just to the part. If the cosmos is not attributed to one Source that has absolute knowledge of all things, one must concede that each particle possesses knowledge and consciousness – not just of itself but also of all the things to which it is related, however distant. In short, if it is not acting according to a wise and measured command from One Who has absolute knowledge and power, we must attribute to the particle itself a limitless source of wisdom and knowledge on which it can draw in order to function. Moreover, if we deny that it is acting according to the wise command of an AllKnowing Creator, we have to concede that the particle itself is fully conscious and moving actively towards the realisation of a purpose of which it is completely aware. In other words, thanks to the interconnectedness of all things, a single particle functioning in a single organ must, by virtue of the connectivity of that organ to the rest of creation, possess knowledge and vision enough to comprehend the whole of the cosmos. As Nursi points out, if we attribute such qualities to each of the minute particles which make up our bodies, or which function within them, we are in effect according them the kind of status that even human geniuses such as Plato would not warrant. Yet if a particle has knowledge, consciousness, power and sense of purpose, why does it allow itself to become subjugated to others and consumed by them? And why does it act with its fellow particles in perfect harmony and symbiosis, as though working at the command of something or someone else? Second impossibility Imagine your being as a fabulous palace with a thousand domes, the bricks of which stand together in suspension without any visible means of support. Indeed, you are a thousand times more wondrous than that structure, for your particular ‘palace’ is being renewed continuously, with perfect order. Leaving aside the wonders of your spirit, your heart and your other senses and faculties, each member of your body resembles a singledomed section of the palace. And like the bricks of a dome, the particles in your body stand together in perfect order and harmony, demonstrating that each organ – the eye, for example, or the tongue – is like a wondrous building of its own, an extraordinary work of art and a miracle of power. If these particles were not like officials, functioning in accordance with the commands of the master Architect of the universe, then each particle would have to have absolute dominance over the rest of the particles in the body while simultaneously demonstrating absolute submission to them: it would have to be both equal to its fellow

109

The Qur’an Revealed  particles insofar as its submission is concerned, yet superior to all others with regard to its position of dominance. Furthermore, it would have to be both the source of infinite attributes of perfection – attributes that pertain to the necessarily existent One alone – while remaining quite obviously finite and restricted. It would have to be absolute, yet somehow display the form of a perfectly ordered individual artefact that could, thanks to the mystery of Divine unity, belong only to the One God. As anyone with even a modicum of consciousness will understand, to attribute such an artefact to particles like these is clearly beyond the bounds of possibility.20

In this ‘Second Impossibility’, Nursi focuses once again on the order and harmony evident in the formation of living beings, but this time from the perspective of the whole and its parts. The human body, he argues, is like a harmoniously-structured palace, while each member, organ and cell in that body resembles a ‘single-domed section’ of the edifice that is the body. Just as the body as a whole exhibits order and harmony, each constituent part of the body exhibits exactly the same features. Just as the various structures in the body join together in harmony to make the whole, the cells and particles in each of the body’s organs join together in similar fashion to make each constituent part. Each part is, in turn, a whole in itself, as is each of the even smaller parts which stand together in harmony to form it, down to each individual cell and on to the atoms and sub-atomic structures which hold them together. Just as the body is a ‘palace’ or a world, each of its organs is also a harmoniously designed structure in its own right. That the parts which go to make up the whole, and the particles which go to make up the constituent parts of that whole, should come together of their own accord is ruled out by Nursi: the only way that they could come together and stand in harmony to produce these marvellously appointed structures within structures is if they are acting in accordance with the commands and directives of One Who is able to comprehend, and have power over, the whole as well as each of the parts. Nursi points out that the particles which form an organ such as the eye are like the bricks which support each other in a free-standing dome: if they were not acting under orders, as it were, each would become both subjugator and subjugated at the same time. For example, each particle in the eye, or brick in the dome, would, if possessed of autonomy, have to force others into position while simultaneously surrendering its own autonomy by taking up a predetermined position itself. Furthermore, each particle would need a comprehensive knowledge of the whole to whose existence it was contributing: for example, each particle of the eye would have to comprehend the function not only of the eye as a whole, but of the eye and the body of which the eye is part, and to whose successful functioning it contributes. Since a particle cannot be a subjugated being and a free agent possessed of infinite knowledge, wisdom and power at the same time, Nursi rejects unequivocally the notion that a whole can somehow be created by its own parts. Third impossibility If the text of your being is not ‘written’ by the pen of the pre-eternal, all-powerful One of Unity, but is instead ‘printed’ by ‘natural causes’, then there would have to exist in nature as many printing blocks designed solely for the creation of your being as there are atoms in your body. Consider for a moment the book you are reading right now. If this

110

  On Nature and Causation book were handwritten, it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that it was the work of a single hand. However, if it is claimed that the book has not been written by a single writer, but exists, rather, of its own accord, or thanks to ‘natural causes’, then as a printed book it would need as many individual printing blocks as there are letters upon its pages; it would need a multiplicity of different pens or pieces of type rather than a single pen in a single hand.21

Here, Nursi seems to be restating from a slightly different perspective the impossibility of an infinite regress of hierarchical causes, discussed in the ‘Second Impossibility’ of the ‘First Way’. A living being – a human body, for example – is, he says, like a book that has been composed of countless letters. Nursi claims that if we reject the notion that this book has been written – and continues to be written – by a single Author, we have no option but to attribute its composition to multiple authors, with multiple pens or printing blocks. In other words, if we reject the existence of a single Cause which creates everything directly, the only alternative is to posit the existence of multiple causal agents which are responsible for the creation of all the effects in the universe. Each of these causal agents in turn requires a cause, and each of these causes too must be accounted for in some way. Eventually, the number of ‘pens’ or ‘printing blocks’ needed to ‘write’ a single cell of the human body would be unimaginably large – to the extent, in fact, of being physically and conceptually impossible, as Nursi’s rejection of an infinite regress of ‘horizontal’ causes has shown. The slight difference in perspective here appears to lie in the fact that Nursi is looking at the world from the viewpoint of the fallacious notion that “things form themselves” – the motif of this ‘Second Way’. What is meant by “things form themselves” here, it appears, is the belief that beings are brought into existence by the purposeful coming together of their component parts – each of which acts as a ‘causal agent’ – rather than the notion that a single being is able to bring itself out of non-existence into existence and literally ‘form itself ’ from nothing. While both notions would, one may argue, have appeared equally illogical and fallacious to Nursi, one feels that he would not have expended any intellectual effort on trying to refute the latter one; the likelihood that his focus was on the former is borne out by the passage which follows on: Furthermore, one often comes across examples of calligraphic art in which hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny letters are drawn in such a way that they produce one large letter, which fills the whole page. To ascribe the production of such a work to ‘causes’ is to admit that a thousand pens or more would be needed to produce that single large letter. Your body, with all of its components one within the other in a series of concentric circles, is the same: to ascribe its creation to ‘nature’ is to posit the existence of innumerable printing blocks – one for each component, and one for each of the myriad different combinations that these components form. However, the impossibilities involved in ascribing these things to ‘nature’ do not end here, for we have yet to account for the creation of the printing blocks themselves. For each of these blocks would have to depend for its existence on another unique block; that block would have to have been created, and would in turn depend on the existence of another unique printing block, and so on, ad infinitum. In short, for a single block to come into being, there would need to be more blocks than there are particles in your

111

The Qur’an Revealed  body in order to bring it into existence. To believe that this is the case is to believe in the impossible; it is nothing but superstition and misguidance.22

Pictorial calligraphy, in which words are manipulated and structured into the shape of a human figure, a bird, an animal or an object, has always been a highly prized art among Muslims. Examples include whole Quranic verses in the form of a mosque; a person at prayer composed of the words which form the shahāda ; or the Arabic letters yā and sīn written large enough to fill a page and composed entirely of the words which make up the Quranic chapter known as Yā-Sīn. Here, Nursi likens the body to a work of pictorial calligraphic art, composed of countless letters that are themselves made up of other letters, and so on. Nursi’s point is quite clear: to say that ‘things form themselves’ is like saying that the letters which make up the single calligraphic figure are produced simultaneously by different pens wielded by different calligraphers rather than by a single Calligrapher, which, he would no doubt aver, would clearly be far easier and more acceptable to reason. To say that the human body, which is made up of countless letters arranged in a bewildering amount of different combinations, is the result of the creative act not of God but of ‘nature’ - the components of the body themselves - would be to posit the existence of as many infinitesimally small ‘pens’ as there are particles. The next problem would be how to account for the existence of these ‘pens’, each of which, being material, would need to have been brought into being. To attribute the particles of body to nature, to some kind of ‘natural’ force within those particles, is to posit an infinite regress of material causes on the microcosmic level. And this, as we have seen already, is deemed impossible by Nursi.

The Third Way

Nursi says that advocates of the third way believe in the dictum ‘nature necessitates it’ or ‘nature makes it’. Such statements, he says, conceal numerous impossibilities, three of which he outlines in full. First impossibility If the artistry and creativity inherent in the creation of all things – and in animate beings in particular – are attributed not to the Power of God and the Pen of Divine Determining but to the blind, deaf and unconscious forces of nature, a serious problem arises. For to ascribe the creation of the cosmos to nature necessitates that nature should include or make available in all things the wherewithal for their creation, and that there should exist within each being the power and the wisdom needed to form, sustain and administer the whole universe. The reason for this is as follows. Consider the reflection of the sun in tiny pieces of mirror or glass, or in countless water droplets scattered across the face of the earth. If each tiny reflected sun that we see in each shard of glass, or in each droplet of water, is not seen for what it is – namely a reflection, or manifestation, of the actual sun – then we have no option but to posit the existence of a real source of light in every shard and in every droplet. Similarly, if we do not attribute beings and animate creatures directly to the pre-eternal ‘sun’ that is God, through the manifestation of His Names, then we have no

112

  On Nature and Causation option but to accept that within each being – and within each animate being in particular - there is a force which possesses infinite power, knowledge, wisdom and will; in short, we have to imagine the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient ‘god’ in every single being. Surely this is an impossibility which borders on the absurd and the superstitious. Furthermore it shows that those who attribute the artistry of the Creator of the cosmos to this insignificant construct known as ‘nature’ must be considerably less conscious of the truth than the beasts of the field.23

The arguments put forward by Nursi to show the impossibilities of the ‘Third Way’ rest for the most part on his assertion that while there is infinite facility in the attribution of all beings to a single Source, countless, insuperable difficulties arise when they are attributed to a multiplicity of sources. In the ‘First Impossibility’ here, Nursi invokes the ‘sun allegory’, which is used on a number of occasions in the Risale to elucidate the mysteries of Divine unity. In its own right, a shard of glass or broken mirror cannot contain a light that is larger than its own mass and dimensions. Exposed to the rays of the sun, however, the shard is able to the extent of its limited capacity to display a comprehensive manifestation of that vast celestial body and mimic to a degree its functions. Moreover, a million shards of glass, all exposed to the rays of the sun at the same time, will all manifest the same sun in a manner commensurate with their varying dimensions and capacities. It makes no difference to the sun how many shards of glass there are to manifest its reflection: the effort expended by the sun is the same whether it shines on a single shard of glass or a billion shards of glass. For Nursi, the sun here is representative of Divine unity. When the creation of beings is attributed to a single Source possessed of infinite knowledge, power, wisdom and will, then it is as easy for that Source to produce a billion beings as it is to produce a single being, just as it is as easy for the sun in the sky to shine on a billion shards of glass as it is to shine on a single shard.24 However, if we take that Source – i.e. God – out of the equation, the responsibility for the creation of each being will rest with the being itself. And since we are talking now not about material causes but rather about ‘nature’, we would, in the absence of a single Creator, have to posit the existence in each being of a some kind of ‘natural’ force that is, of necessity, endowed with infinite knowledge, power, wisdom and will. In other words, each being, from the infinitesimally small to the incomprehensively large, would have to possess precisely the same set of attributes which belong to the God Who has been taken out of the equation. For Nursi, of course, such a notion defies reason and is promptly dismissed. Second impossibility Beings are created in a measured and orderly fashion, betokening artistry and wisdom that can belong only to One Who is infinitely powerful and wise. If, then, one chooses to ascribe the existence of beings not to Him but to nature, it becomes necessary to seek the source of existence of beings in those very beings themselves. Take, for example, a number of different flower seeds, grown in a large bowl of soil. Despite the fact that the soil is the same, each flower possesses its own individual shape and form. It appears that there is some kind of ability in the bowl of soil that is able to bestow upon each flower the particular form, shape, colour and scent that distinguishes it from the rest. Now, if this

113

The Qur’an Revealed  ability is not attributed to One with absolute power, it becomes necessary to imagine a separate source of power, knowledge, wisdom and existence for each flower.25

Nursi’s argument here hinges yet again on the difficulties which obtain when qualities such as power, wisdom, knowledge, artistry and the ability to bestow existence are attributed not to a single Source but to limited, contingent beings themselves. In Nursi’s example of the different flowers which grow in the same soil, watered by the same water and exposed to the same sunlight, there is a suggestion that for him, ‘nature’ is something which the materialists believe inheres in a being in order to give it its uniqueness. The ‘nature’ of a thing is, therefore, the innate ‘disposition’ which makes that being what it is. Nursi naturally rejects this notion. If we exclude the possibility of One God Who possesses all of the attributes of perfection at an absolute level – attributes which, quite clearly, are needed in order to bring things into existence – then we have no option but to attribute to each contingent, limited being a God-like ‘nature’. Nursi continues: This is because most life forms – sperms and eggs, for example – are composed largely of the same basic matter: a combination of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen. Yet from these seeds emerge countless different species of flowers in a most well-ordered and artistic fashion, despite the fact that the simple constituents vital to their growth, such as air, water, heat and light, are in themselves unconscious forces which flood everywhere haphazardly unless brought under control. To attribute the emergence of these seeds to ‘nature’ is to posit the existence in the soil of countless thousands of miniature, immaterial printing-presses and workshops, working away in the bowl in order to produce such a rich and varied profusion of flowers. Thus you can see how the naturalists have deviated from the realm of reason and adopted a mindset that is characterised largely by unbelief; while they claim to be men of ‘science and reason’, there is little of either in their way of thought, which is irrational, superstitious and self-defeating.26

If we do not believe in one God, Nursi argues, then each thing becomes the creation of this elusive creature known as nature. However, there cannot be just one ‘nature’ but a myriad different ‘natures’ – as many, in fact, as there are individual beings in creation. For if nature were truly unitary, and possessed of all the attributes of perfection, as surely it must be if it is to create even the smallest of beings, would it not simply be God by another name? If, as some may ask, such extraordinary impossibilities arise when beings are attributed to ‘natural causes’, how do they then disappear when beings are ascribed to the Single, Eternally Besought One? How does something once so difficult now become so easy? The answer to this is simple. In the ‘First Impossibility’ we saw how, by means of its reflection, the sun manifests itself and displays its radiance in all things with the utmost ease, from the tiniest inanimate particle to the surface of the largest ocean. If we were to sever the relationship that each particle enjoys with the sun, it would then become necessary to assume the actual existence of a light source – a miniature sun, no less – in each of those tiny particles. Such an assumption would, of course, be absurd. Similarly, if each being is ascribed to the Single, Eternally Besought One, everything necessary for its creation and its continued existence can, with absolute

114

  On Nature and Causation facility, be conveyed to it through the direct connection it enjoys with its Creator. Sever this connection, however, and each being stops being an official in the employ of God and is left instead to ‘nature’ and its own devices. But to sever the connection is to assume that blind ‘nature’ possesses wisdom and power enough to create and administer the universe in such a way that it is able to bring into existence animate beings as wondrous and complex as the humble fly, which in many respects is like the cosmos in miniature. Such assumptions are beset with countless contradictions and impossibilities, and clearly beggar belief. In short, just as it is impossible for the Necessarily Existent One to have any partner or peer in respect of His Essence, so too is it impossible for others to share in His dominicality, or to take part in the creation of beings.27

To explain why the coming into existence of a multiplicity of beings entails numerous impossibilities if their creation is attributed to causes, and to show how these impossibilities disappear if the creation of these beings is attributed to one Source alone, Nursi again invokes the ‘sun allegory’. When ascribed directly to God, the creation of all things becomes as easy as the creation of a single thing, thanks to the nature of Divine Unity; when the connection between created beings and their Creator is severed, however, the creation of a single thing becomes more difficult than the creation of a whole universe; indeed, since beings are limited and contingent, they are unable to sustain their own existence for an instance, let alone bring into existence another being. With regard to the difficulties discussed in the Second Impossibility, the Risale-i Nur has demonstrated on numerous occasions that if all things are attributed to the Single One of Unity, then the creation of the whole cosmos becomes as easy and unproblematic as the creation of a single being. When they are attributed to ‘natural causes’, however, the situation is reversed: the creation of a single being becomes as difficult as the creation of the whole cosmos. For example, imagine a soldier in the service of a king. By dint of the fact that he is connected to the king, he is able on occasion to carry out duties and perform tasks that far exceed his own individual strength or authority. For example, in the name of his own king, he may even capture other kings. He himself does not have to carry the equipment or manifest the actual force with which the task is to be carried out, supported as he is by the connection he enjoys with the king’s treasury and the army which stands behind him. As such, the duties he carries out may be as grand as those of a king; the actions he performs as impressive as those of a whole army. For example, in their capacity as officials, an ant was able to destroy the palace of Pharaoh, and a fly was able to annihilate Nimrod. And it is through such a connection that a tiny pine seed is able to produce a vast pine tree. Were the soldier in the previous example to be discharged from his duties and see his connection to the king severed, he would be forced to carry the equipment necessary for the task in hand himself. Consequently, he would then be able to perform only those duties for which he was equipped; were he to be required in these circumstances to carry out the kind of tasks given to him when he enjoyed a connection to the king, it would be necessary for him to carry single-handedly the equipment and ammunition of a whole army – a notion that is as risible as it is impossible.28

115

The Qur’an Revealed  Again, what Nursi is saying here is that when all beings are attributed to one God, the act of creation becomes easy; when beings are instead attributed to ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ causes, their creation becomes so beset with difficulties as to be logically untenable. Third impossibility The following analogies may help to explain this impossibility: A savage enters a palace that has been built in the middle of a desert, and which is adorned with all of the fruits and accoutrements of civilisation. Casting an eye over its interior, he sees thousands of well-ordered and artistically fashioned objects. However, on account of his ignorance, he says: “No-one from outside could have had a hand in all of this: obviously it is one of the objects from inside that has made the palace and all that it contains.” Yet despite his best efforts to understand how this might have happened, he is unable to fathom how an object inside the palace could be responsible for the creation of all of those things. Later he comes across a handbook which includes the construction plans of the palace, an inventory of its contents and a guide to the rules of its administration. Seeing that the handbook is connected to all of the objects in the palace by dint of the fact that they are all mentioned in its pages, he comes to the bizarre conclusion that it is the handbook that is responsible for the creation, organisation and adornment of the palace and all that it contains. And this despite the fact that the handbook is, like all of the objects mentioned within it, completely powerless to create a single atom, let alone construct and decorate a whole palace. Now consider the naturalist who denies God as he contemplates the vast palace that is the cosmos – an edifice infinitely more well-structured than the man-made palace entered by the savage, and replete with miraculous instances and examples of wisdom. Rejecting the idea that what he sees is the work of art fashioned by a necessarily existent Creator who stands outside the sphere of contingency, he focuses his attention on the laws which appear to be operating in the universe. These laws are, in fact, merely an expression of Divine practice and an index of dominical art: a metaphorical slate, as it were, upon which the edicts of Divine Determining are constantly being written and erased; a constantly changing notebook in which the laws of the functioning of Divine power are written and re-written. However, mistaking the true identity of these Divine laws and erroneously bestowing upon them the name ‘nature’, he says: “These things require a cause, and nothing else appears to be as intimately connected to all beings in the cosmos as this guidebook. Granted, reason can in no way accept that this unseeing, unconscious and powerless guidebook could be responsible for this creation, which requires absolute dominicality and an infinite power. However, since I do not recognise an Eternal Maker, the most plausible explanation must be that the guidebook is responsible for creation, and so that is the line I shall take.” 29

In this ‘Third Impossibility’, Nursi now moves the focus from the nebulous entity known as ‘nature’ and places it instead on those guiding principles which appear to facilitate the running of the universe: the seemingly ubiquitous but intriguingly elusive ‘laws of nature’. He uses the analogy of a simple man who comes across a fabulous palace in the middle of a desert, filled with sumptuous pieces of furniture and works of art. Rejecting for some reason

116

  On Nature and Causation the notion that someone outside the palace might have created it, and unable to believe that one of the objects inside the palace could be responsible for the palace and all it contains, he ponders a third possibility. Finding a catalogue which includes the ground plan of the palace and a list of all the objects in its numerous rooms, along with their description, he hits on the bizarre idea that the creator of the palace and all that it contains is the catalogue itself. His rationale is that since all effects require a cause, and nothing else in the palace seems to have as close a connection with the building and its contents as the catalogue has, then it must surely be the work of the catalogue. Even though the man’s reason is not satisfied by the conclusion he has reached, in the absence of an outside Creator, whom he refuses to recognise, it is the only conclusion he can accept. Nursi then asks us to consider the position of those who ascribe the creation of beings to the ‘laws of nature’, which he likens to a catalogue or guidebook which describes the way in which God creates. To ascribe creation to mental constructs which are no more than a means of identifying the relationship which exists between the beings created directly by God is, he asserts, as risible as ascribing the creation of the palace and its wonders to the inventory of its contents. The absurdity involved in such an assumption truly beggars belief. Were those who hold these opinions to lift their heads out of the quagmire of naturalism and look beyond themselves, they would see how truly untenable their position is. For they would see an All-Glorious Maker, to Whose existence all beings – from particles to planets – testify with the tongue of mute eloquence. They would see in all things the manifestation of the Pre-Eternal Inscriber Who has fashioned the palace, and Who has made a record of its construction plans, contents and organisational principles in the guidebook. Seeing all of this, they would do well to study His decree and listen to the Quran; maybe then they see how truly absurd their ideas are.30

Nursi consolidates his argument by offering two more analogies: A simple peasant enters the grounds of a splendid palace and watches the orderly movements of a well-trained army as it carries out its parade drill. He sees a battalion, a regiment and a division all stand to attention, march and open fire when commanded as though they were a single individual. Unable to comprehend the fact that the soldiers are obeying the orders of a commander in accordance with royal decree, the peasant accounts for the harmonious movements of the soldiers by imagining that they are attached to one another by some amazing system of ropes and pulleys. Later, he enters a magnificent mosque in time to witness the Friday prayer. There he watches as the whole congregation of Muslims stands, bows and prostrates in harmony with the utterances of the prayer leader. Ignorant of the shari‘a, which is a corpus of nonmaterial laws revealed by God, our friend imagines that the numerous rows of Muslims which make up the congregation must be tied to one another with strings, and that it is thanks to these strings that they are all moving, puppet-like, in absolute unison and harmony. Satisfied with this ridiculous explanation, he goes on his way. Now consider the atheist, mired in the brutishness of materialism, as he contemplates the universe around him – a universe which resembles a beautifully

117

The Qur’an Revealed  constructed mosque for the worship of the Lord and Monarch of all creation. Observing the way the world works, he looks at the immaterial laws which underpin the running of the cosmos, and which merely reflect the wisdom of the Pre-Eternal Monarch, and imagines that they have a external physicality; he looks at the supra-material rules and ordinances given by God as part of the ‘greater shari‘a’ – the shari‘a of creation – and ascribes to them a concrete materiality which they simply do not possess, given that they exist only as an aspect of divine knowledge. Rather than see those theoretical laws for what they are, namely as immaterial manifestations of the Divine attributes of knowledge and speech, they attribute creative power to them and describe them collectively as ‘nature’. And to the ‘forces of nature’, which are merely a manifestation of God’s dominical power, they ascribe some kind of independent existence – as though power could exist separately from the source which manifests it. In so doing, the atheist proves himself to be a far more ignorant specimen of humanity than the poor peasant in the previous example.31

The rather simplistic nature of the analogies notwithstanding, Nursi’s point is clear. The laws according to which the cosmos is able to function, he argues, are abstractions: they are ways of describing, and predicting, how the constituent parts of creation function and interact with each other. An example is Newton’s law of universal gravitation. This law states that any two objects attract and exert force on each other in a manner proportional to the product of their respective masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance that separates them. This is known as a general physical law, derived inductively from various empirical observations and experiments. This law is the means whereby the attraction between objects is described, and Nursi has no problem with this: after all, for him, ‘laws of nature’ are simply another way of describing how God creates. What Nursi objects to is the attribution of phenomena to the laws which have been formulated simply to describe them. In the case of gravity, for example, the universal law of gravitation is a means of explaining attraction between objects; it is not the cause of the attraction. However, in order to explain this attraction, Nursi says, secular modern science gives it a name – the law of universal gravitation – and then imagines that it has actually identified the cause of the attraction. For Nursi, this makes no sense at all. Starting from the observation of the recurrence of an event under similar conditions, what science actually does is come up with a generalization, which it then calls a ‘law’. With regard to gravity, for example, after having observed that all objects fall when thrown into the air, science arrives at a generalization that all such objects will, when thrown into the air, fall back to earth. This generalization is then codified as a physical law, and is used not only to describe past events but also to predict future ones. However, it is has no concrete external existence and therefore cannot be the cause of anything, only the description. To these theoretical entities, Nursi says, materialist scientists attribute creative power; they then describe them collectively as ‘nature’ and credit them with the ability to bring things into existence. The notion that immaterial laws could be responsible for the creation of the cosmos is rejected by Nursi, who says that even if they did have external existence, that existence would be itself be contingent. In short, if the imaginary being known by the naturalists as ‘nature’ has any external reality at all, it can at the very most be a work of art; it cannot be the Artist. It is like an

118

  On Nature and Causation embroidery, and cannot be the Embroiderer. It is a set of decrees; it cannot be the One who issues the decrees. It is a corpus of the laws of creation; it cannot be the Lawgiver. It is a veil created to screen the dignity of God; it cannot be the Creator. It is a law, not a power. It is the recipient, and cannot be the source.32

The fourth way

Having rejected the propositions which underpin the first three ‘ways’, Nursi concludes that there is only one possible solution remaining: a fourth way – the way of Divine Unity. To conclude, then, we may say that of the four possible explanations for the existence of beings mentioned at the beginning of this treatise, three have been discounted as invalid on account of the blatant absurdities they involve. Given this, the fourth way – the way of Divine Unity – provides the only answer to our question, and its truth has been proven here conclusively. Indeed, as the verse Is there any doubt about God, Creator of the heavens and the earth? 33demonstrates, there can be no doubt that all things issue forth directly from the hand of power of the Necessarily Existent One, and that the heavens and the earth and all that exists in them are under His sway. How misguided and unfortunate, then, are those who worship causes and ‘nature’. For the nature of each being is created; it displays the artistry of another and is being renewed constantly. Also, like the effect, the apparent cause of each thing is also created. Furthermore, for each being to come into existence, many tools are needed. Given all of this, there must be a Possessor of Absolute Power who creates ‘nature’ and brings each cause into existence. And that Absolutely Powerful One certainly has no need of impotent intermediaries or helpers to share in His dominicality. For God creates cause and effect together directly. In order to display His Wisdom and manifest His Names, He establishes an apparent connection between cause and effect and, by so doing, turns ‘nature’ into a veil which screens the divine ‘hand of power’ and allows the apparent faults and flaws in things to be ascribed to beings themselves, thus preserving His dignity.34

Having argued that the first three ‘ways’ are logically inconceivable, and that ‘causes’ and ‘nature’ are inherently limited, contingent and therefore created, Nursi redefines them not as agents of creation and change but as a ‘veil’ which acts as a screen for Divine ‘dignity’. There is indeed a connection between cause and effect, but the connection is only an apparent one: in reality, cause and effect issue forth from the same source simultaneously, with the former only seeming to produce the latter. The ‘cause’ is merely the ‘occasion’ for the appearance of the ‘effect’; in reality, from the perspective of their common Source, they are both ‘effects’, with the fact that one precedes the other temporally leading to the illusion that they are causally linked. The notion that nature or causes act as ‘veil’ to hide the ‘hand of power’ is another way of saying that the illusion of causation is necessary for God to remain hidden and thus ‘discoverable’ by man through the journey of belief and submission he is expected to undertake. Apparent causation is an inherent feature of the time and space-bound realm that is earthly existence; without it, we who are immersed within that realm would be unable to function. The objective, according to the Quran, is to be able to see past the illusion and conceptually remove the ‘veil’ of causation in order to arrive at the truth of transcendence and the reality of the Divine. And the notion that causality is a ‘veil’ which screens Divine

119

The Qur’an Revealed  ‘dignity’ is another way of saying that for the traveller at the beginning of his journey towards the Divine, it is more fitting to attribute apparent flaws and faults to beings – to causes – rather than to God. In other words, causality is a necessary fiction which saves those with an imperfect understanding of God from becoming alienated from Him before they are able to realise in time that the flaws and faults they see are in fact only apparent. The fact that the ‘hand’ of God, albeit veiled by apparent causes, is continuously at work in the creation and maintenance of the cosmos clearly runs at odds with the old Newtonian notion of the ‘mechanistic universe’, as Nursi goes on to demonstrate. Is it easier for a watchmaker to fashion a clock himself, or to insert a tiny machine in each of the cogwheels and then leave the making of the clock to them? Is it easier for a scribe to copy out a book himself, or to create some kind of machine designed specifically to write that book and that book alone? The creation of such a machine is a feat that requires considerably more time and artistry than is involved in one man copying out a book by hand, particularly if the machine is to be used only once. Furthermore, the notion that an unconscious machine could produce such a book without the interference of the maker of the machine beggars belief. However, while the sceptic may concede that it is indeed a hundred times more difficult to create a writing machine for one book than it is to copy out the book by hand, he may argue that in one respect it may be much easier, for the machine could actually be designed to produce numerous copies of the same book. The answer to this is simple. Through His limitless power, the Pre-Eternal Inscriber renews the infinite manifestations of His Names continuously, thus displaying them in numberless, ever-differing ways. Through this constant renewal, He creates the features and identities of things in such a way that no two beings are ever the same: no dominical book written by the Eternally Besought One can be the same as another book, since each displays different features in order to express different meanings. Consider, for example, the fact that of the countless human beings who have existed from the time of Adam until now, no two have had absolutely identical faces. Each human face may thus be thought of as a unique book. And to print the text and artwork for all of these unique books, a separate printing press and a wholly individualised process of composition and typesetting will be needed. Furthermore, to collate and put to use all of the materials necessary for the existence of each one, a completely different workshop will be required.35

The rhetorical questions at the beginning of the above section appear to have been posed by Nursi with the express intent of exposing the weaknesses at the heart of the mechanistic view of the universe. The Newtonian view of how the world works was the dominant cosmological model in European thought for several centuries, and arguably still holds sway in some quarters. Newton believed that the world was like a vast machine, built by a Creator and set into motion. Newton based his view on the concept of inertia – the fact that every object will remain at rest until moved by another object, and that every object in motion will stay in motion until it is stopped or its trajectory changed by another object. According to this concept, no object has the ability to move or stop itself. In the mechanistic view, then, the universe is like a massive billiard table, on which each ball moves because something has knocked into it or caused it to move.

120

  On Nature and Causation The philosophical problem that this view poses is a serious one: if no object is able to move itself, who moved the first object and set the universe in motion? Aristotle claimed to have solved the problem by invoking the concept of an ‘unmoved Mover’ who, at some unspecified point in the distant past – the ‘beginning of time’ – was able to set the universe in motion without having to be moved itself. In other words, to avoid the problem of an infinite regress stretching back into pre-eternity, Aristotle broke the vicious circle by positing a Prime Mover who stands outside the circle and is thus not constrained by its laws and limitations. The idea was later taken up in the medieval era by the scholastic theologians, who believed that the cosmos functioned in a wholly mechanistic way, set in motion and overseen by an unmoving ‘Prime Mover’. These, together with the laws and theories that he himself developed, were the foundations upon which Newton’s mechanistic view of the universe were built. For him, the universe was a vast machine filled with cogs and wheels which moved each other and functioned according to rationally perceptible laws. However, the machine still required something to set it all in motion in the first place, and that something, for Newton as a believer, was God. The Newtonian God, however, was not one who would ‘interfere’ with the day-to-day workings of the vast machine known as the universe, which, once set in motion, was able to run efficiently on its own steam. Gradually, the notion that the universe was mechanistic in nature led to the emergence of the belief that there was no need to involve God or religion in order to explain how the universe worked: human reason, rather than revelation, would suffice.36 Nursi concedes that if the cosmos were a machine created by God, left to function independently and designed to churn out replicas of the same thing over and over again, in much the same way that a photocopier does, the mechanistic view might conceivably hold water. However, the uniqueness of all beings prevents us from thinking of the world as a vast cosmic photocopy machine. For the ‘machine’ posited by those who subscribe to the mechanistic view is producing not the same thing repeatedly but rather an almost infinite variety of different things, some simple and others incredibly complex. Nursi rejects the Newtonian notion of a mechanistic universe, set in motion initially by God and then left to run by itself, by highlighting the singularity of all created beings: everything which enters the sphere of existence is unique in all respects, bearing the imprint not of some vast photocopier but of a ‘pre-eternal Inscriber’ Who manifests Himself ceaselessly through the endless number of different creatures that He brings in and out of existence at each moment in time. Even if we suspend our disbelief for a moment and think of ‘nature’ as a kind of printing press, the problems soon multiply. For apart from the actual act of composition – the setting up of the printing press and the arrangement of the typesetting – we must account for the actual substances that form the body of an animate being, the creation of which is a hundred times more complex than the composition itself. These substances have to be created in specific proportions and in a precisely delineated order, then brought from the furthest reaches of the cosmos and placed at the disposal of this metaphorical printing press. However, in order for these things to materialise, there is still a need for the will and the power of the absolutely powerful One – the Creator of the printing press itself.

121

The Qur’an Revealed  This fact itself shows the utter bankruptcy of the printing press hypothesis, which is little more than a meaningless superstition.37

To suspend disbelief and think of the cosmos as a ‘kind of printing press’ is one thing, but to attribute to that printing press the ability not just to print the ‘book of creation’, which changes in form and content from second to second, but also to create the myriad different kinds of material on which those ‘words’ – the beings which populate the cosmos – are printed, is another thing entirely. In other words, we are talking about a ‘printing press’ which is endowed not only with knowledge and power, but also with will. To deny the existence of a Creator who possesses absolute power, knowledge and will, and to attribute those qualities instead to some vast cosmic printing press is, for Nursi, the height of absurdity. For him the answer is clear: That all things are created through the power of God is the compelling conclusion of countless rational proofs. Now, is it easier to accept this, or is it easier to imagine that beings are brought into existence by those unconscious entities that you call causes or the forces of nature? Is it at all possible that phenomena which are lifeless and dependent could gather together the innumerable tools needed for the task of creation and then bring the whole world of beings into existence with wisdom and discernment? 38

At this point in the proceedings, Nursi’s naturalist and champion of causation admits that to believe in the power of material causes to create is to believe the unbelievable. The unbelieving naturalist and worshipper of causes replied: “Since you are asking me to be reasonable, I must confess that the path I have followed up until now has been a harmful one, full of absurdities and superstitions. Anyone with even a modicum of common sense would understand from your analyses that to attribute the act of creation to so-called ‘natural causes’ is to posit an impossibility, while to attribute all things directly to the necessarily existent One is the only way open to reason. I can therefore say that all praise be to God for the bounty of belief, for I now believe in Him. However, there is still one small area of doubt left in my mind. While I believe that Almighty God is the Creator, what harm would it do to the sovereignty of His dominicality if minor causes actually did have a hand in the creation, thereby acquiring for themselves a certain amount of credit and acclaim? Surely this would not diminish Him in any way?” 39

What the former sceptic is asking here is whether Divine sovereignty would be demeaned or found wanting in any way if we were to attribute some aspects of creation to causes. Would it matter if, for example, God were to give some of His creatures the creational wherewithal to bring into existence other beings of their own accord? Would it be such an issue if human beings were able to attribute to themselves creative power of a very real kind, and thus claim ownership over their own actions? Nursi’s answer is an incisive one. As we have proven conclusively elsewhere in the Risale-i Nur, one of the distinguishing characteristics of leadership is that it does not brook interference: the most insignificant ruler or official will not tolerate the intrusion into his affairs of even his closest friends or relations. For example, the fact that a number of otherwise devout Ottoman sultans had their innocent male heirs murdered out of fear that they might interfere in their rule

122

  On Nature and Causation shows us exactly how fundamental this principle of “rejection of interference” actually is. And human history is littered with examples of the extraordinary upheavals which take place whenever there have been two rival governors in a town or kings in a country. Now if human rulers reject the interference of others and work so zealously to safeguard their own sovereignty, one can only imagine how inimical Divine sovereignty will be to the intervention of others. For the sovereignty, dominicality, power and independence of the All-Glorious One are absolute, and the inevitable concomitant of absolute divinity is its rejection of the interference of partners or rivals.40

While Nursi’s answer is unequivocal, his use of the analogy of allegedly ‘devout’ Ottoman sultans having their male heirs murdered in order to demonstrate how fundamental the aversion of human beings is to the interference and intervention of others in their affairs may appear inappropriate; after all, God, as Nursi would be the first to admit, is not some insecure tyrant who is so scared of losing his hold on power that he must resort to barbarism in order to safeguard it. In passages such as this, context is all: one must bear in mind not only the era in which Nursi was writing but also his socio-political background and, more importantly, the mindset of his primary target audience. In reality, of course, Divine sovereignty is not inimical to the intervention of others on account of any desire on God’s part to protect His sovereignty: His sovereignty is inimical to intervention for the simple reason that it is absolute. And what is absolute cannot, by its very nature, be compromised in any way by that which is limited and contingent. Moreover, God has brought the cosmos into being in order that He may be known, loved and worshipped. Why, then, by dividing up His sovereignty among material causes, Nursi asks, would He act in a manner that is at odds with the whole purpose of creation? Furthermore, the all-wise Creator made the cosmos like a tree, with conscious beings as its most perfect fruit: the most comprehensive of these fruits is man himself. And the very aim behind the creation of man, and the highest goal to which he can aspire, is to worship God and give thanks to Him alone. Would that single One of Unity, whose sovereignty and independence are absolute, and who creates the cosmos in order to make Himself known, loved and worshipped, allow man’s most precious fruit – his thanks and worship – to be enjoyed by others? Is it at all conceivable that He would act in a manner contrary to His own wisdom and render futile the overriding aim of all creation? Would He be content to allow creatures other than Him to be worshipped, thus compromising His dominicality? God shows through His actions that He wishes to make Himself known, loved and worshipped to an infinite degree; given this, would He cause His most perfect creation – man – to forget Him by allowing ‘natural causes’ to receive gratitude, love and worship? Would He cause man to deny the very purpose of all creation?41

Again, it is important to avoid putting an anthropocentric spin on Nursi’s defence of the Divine. God does not refuse to ‘share’ His sovereignty with others because He wishes to avoid the possibility that beings other than Him will be showered with gratitude, love and worship. What Nursi is in fact saying is that the existential reality of man – and of every other created being - is such that knowledge, love, gratitude and worship are not things that he can attract but, rather, things of which, on account of his absolute impotence, he stands

123

The Qur’an Revealed  in perpetual need. If God is known, loved and worshipped it is not because He has any need of these things; it is because He is the only Being Whose attributes truly command them. It is man who, by virtue of his sheer impotence, needs to know, to love, to worship and to give thanks. If God deserves worship, it is because, as Nursi’s sceptic now understands, He is the only One worthy of it. To this the erstwhile naturalist replied, “Thank God that those two doubts of mine have now been dispelled. The arguments you have put forward concerning Divine Unity have convinced me that He and He alone is the only true object of worship. Indeed, the evidence you have produced to support this is so compelling that to deny it would be like saying that black is white, or that night is day. However, there are still a few questions about which I am curious. One of them is as follows. It is indeed true that each being is dependent on Divine will and dominical power for every aspect of its existence, and in all of its functions, qualities and actions. Indeed, this truth is almost too profound for the limited human mind to comprehend. However, there is much to confirm this truth in the infinite abundance of beings that we see around us, or the consummate ease with which things are created and formed. That there exists such facility in the creation of the cosmos is down to the principle of Divine unity, which you established through various proofs earlier on, while verses such as Your creation and resurrection is as a single soul 42 and The matter of the Hour shall be but as the twinkling of an eye, or even closer 43 further attest to the truth of the matter. But what is the secret of the ease behind creation?” The answer to this question lies in the verse And He is powerful over all things, for when attributed to one single Maker, the creation of all beings becomes as easy as the creation of a single being. Consequently, if all beings are not attributed to the single One of Unity, the creation of a single being becomes as difficult as the creation of a whole cosmos filled with beings: the seed becomes as problematical as the tree. Yet when they are ascribed to their true Maker, the cosmos becomes as easy to create as a tree; a tree as easy as a seed; paradise as easy as the spring; and the spring as easy as a single flower. We now turn to one or two of the hundreds of evidences which help to explain the wisdom behind the boundless abundance of beings; the profusion of individuals within each species; and the fact that a multitude of precious, well-ordered and artistically fashioned beings comes into existence with immense speed and the utmost facility. For example, to place a hundred soldiers under the command of one officer is a hundred times easier than placing one soldier under the command of a hundred officers. Similarly, so long as the job is entrusted to one headquarters, one factory and one command, it is as easy to equip a whole army as it is a single soldier. However, if the task of equipping a single soldier is referred to numerous headquarters, numerous factories and numerous different commands, then it becomes as difficult as equipping a whole army. Again, thanks to the mystery of unity, the nutrients vital to the life of a tree are provided through one trunk, one centre and in accordance with one law, and so it is able to produce thousands of fruits as easily as a single fruit. If unity is abandoned for multiplicity, however, and the nutrients are all provided from different sources in accordance with different laws, the production of a single fruit becomes as difficult as the production of the tree itself. In fact, the production of a single seed, which is like the index of the tree, becomes as difficult as the tree, for what is vital for the life of the tree is also

124

  On Nature and Causation vital for the life of the seed. There are hundreds of examples like these which show that it is easier for thousands of beings to come into existence through the principle of unity than it is for a single being to come into existence through multiplicity and the ascription of partners to God.44

Nursi’s approach to the first question posed by the sceptic-turned-believer is similar to the one he takes when dealing with the ‘First Impossibility’ of the ‘Third Way’, where he uses the ‘sun allegory’ to explain the workings of Divine Unity. It is easier to posit a billion shards of glass reflecting the light of a single sun than it is to posit the existence of a billion suns, each reflecting into a single shard, or the existence of a tiny sun within each piece of glass itself. For a Creator who is neither corporeal nor restricted by time and place, encompassing all things at the same time holds no difficulty: the creation of all things is as easy for Him as the creation of one thing, and He performs innumerable acts as though they were a single act. Nursi then goes on to explore the issue of unity and the way in which it facilitates the act of creation from the point of view of the Creator’s infinite power, His omniscience and the principle of Divine determining. Firstly, to attribute your being to the Pre-Eternal and All-Powerful One is to understand that, thanks to His infinite power, He brings you into existence out of nothing, simply by issuing a command; this happens in an instant, like the striking of a match. On the other hand, to attribute your being to ‘natural causes’ is to posit the impossible. For you are the fruit of creation and, in a very real sense, the cosmos in miniature. Since you are such, in order to bring you into existence it would be necessary for these ‘natural causes’ to scour the entire universe and gather together in precise measure the substances out of which your body is composed. Since physical causes can only gather and join together, and are unable to create anything out of nothing, reason dictates that they would be compelled to search as far and wide to collect the materials required to create even the tiniest animate creature. The principle of Divine Unity allows the whole cosmos to be created and administered with the utmost ease; the misguided attribution of ‘partners’ to God does not.45

Continuing with the theme of the facility with which a multiplicity of beings may be attributed to a single, all-powerful, omnipresent Creator who transcends time and space, Nursi’s first point concerns the issue of creatio ex nihilo, or ‘creation from nothing’. Nursi argues that for a transcendent God, free from the restriction of materiality, to bring things into existence through a single command, like striking a match, is far easier than it is for a multiplicity of inanimate, limited and contingent material causes to gather numerous different substances from various places and form them into a single, harmoniously fashioned being. Since the concept of creatio ex nihilo is examined at some length below, we refer readers to that discussion. Secondly, creation occurs with an inherent ease and facility when seen in the light of Divine knowledge. For that aspect of Divine knowledge known as Divine Determining apportions a specific measure to each thing: this determined measure may be likened to an immaterial mould from which the being will emerge, or to a blueprint on a drawing board which prefigures a being’s existence in time and space. When Divine power creates, it does so with the utmost ease, and in accordance with the predetermined measure. If,

125

The Qur’an Revealed  however, the being is not attributed to the all-powerful One of glory, Whose infinite and pre-eternal knowledge embraces all things, then creation becomes an impossibility. For without the existence of the determined measure – that immaterial ‘mould’ - which is an aspect of Divine knowledge, countless material moulds would have to exist in order to produce even the tiniest of animate beings.46

Nursi’s second point focuses on ‘Divine determining’ (qadar) – a term often mistranslated as ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’, but which in reality signifies the fact that each of God’s creations comes into existence with a precisely pre-determined form, as though having emerged from a mould. This ‘determining’ is a function of Divine knowledge, and it is in the sphere of Divine knowledge that the metaphorical ‘moulds’ of all beings are created. Just as the form and dimensions of a building exist in the mind of an architect before he commits them to paper in the form of plans, the precise ‘measure’ of each existent exists in the supra-material realm of Divine knowledge before God, through His power, brings it into being in the material world. If, Nursi says, each thing possesses a precise and clearly pre-determined ‘measure’, but we attribute it to material causes rather than God, then we are faced once more with the notion of an infinite regress of proximate causes. For if we do not believe in the idea of supra-material ‘moulds’ in which beings are ‘planned’ before they come into existence, we have no option but to believe that each being has an indeterminate number of material ‘moulds’ which account for the determining of its particular measure. And since these ‘moulds’ are material, each one of them would also require an indeterminate number of moulds in order to account for their existence, and so on ad infinitum. For Nursi, the reality of ‘Divine determining’ is one of the things which account for the absolute facility with which the whole of creation comes into existence when attributed to Divine unity. And by the same token it shows just how many absurdities and impossibilities are involved when the existence of even the tiniest of beings is ascribed to anything other than God. The erstwhile sceptic, now apparently a confirmed believer, seems to be content with Nursi’s arguments, but cannot leave the discussion without asking one final question. The former sceptic, now a rightly-guided friend, then said: “Modern philosophers claim that nothing is created from nothing, and that nothing can be annihilated or go to nothing: there is only composition and decomposition, and this is what makes the factory of the universe run. Is this correct?” The answer to this question is as follows. Those philosophers who did not consider beings from the viewpoint of the Quran, but who realised that the bringing into existence of beings by nature or causes was so fraught with difficulties as to be logically impossible, split into two groups. The first, known later as sophists, renounced reason and rationality altogether, finding it easier to deny the existence of the universe than to admit that causes or nature have the power to create. Indeed, they went so far as to deny their own existence, and thus descended into abject ignorance.47

There are numerous references to sophistry in the Risale-i Nur, and while Nursi always uses the term appropriately, the lack of explanatory background information on precisely who the sophists were, and why sophism or sophistry is often so maligned, may puzzle the reader.

126

  On Nature and Causation To elucidate, a brief digression into the history of the sophists and their ‘philosophy’ may be useful at this point. We first encounter the Sophists in the fifth century BC as a professional class of educators in Greece. Technically speaking, they were not philosophers but teachers and skilled orators, who taught practically any subject for which there was popular demand. The subjects they covered included rhetoric, grammar, etymology, politics, history and the natural sciences. The first Sophists were held in high esteem by their audiences, particularly in Athens, and respected by the philosophers of the day. Since the greatest demand at this time was for knowledge of politics, with most of the Greek elite aspiring to positions of state, the main focus of the Sophists was on rhetoric, and the concomitant art of persuading people to believe whatever it is deemed that they should believe, whether it was true or not. The Sophists came to pride themselves on their apparent ability to provide arguments in defence of any position or to prove any point. Some of them even claimed that it is not necessary to actually possess knowledge of a subject in order to pontificate on it. The art of the Sophists was based on their ability to score verbal points over their opponents by overwhelming them with a whole array of rhetorical devices, including obscure metaphors, unusual figures of speech, complex paradoxes and ornate displays of cleverness that were based largely on pseudo-logic rather than on the real thing. In short, to win an argument by guile and intellectual deception rather than by recourse to the truth became their primary aim, hence the derogatory word ‘sophistry’, which we use today in order to describe the discourse of those who knowingly use fallacious arguments to prove a point. By the time of Aristotle, who defines a Sophist as one who reasons fallaciously for the sake of gain, the term had become pejorative, and it is in this sense that Nursi uses it. Unfortunately, no body of writing identifiable as ‘Sophistic’ has come down to us; all we have is fragments, and most of these have to be excavated from the writings of contemporary or later philosophers. While Nursi’s portrayal of the Sophists as pseudophilosophers who found it easier to deny the reality of creation altogether than to prove causation may seem somewhat simplistic, it is not really at odds with what we know about the Sophists and their views, and in particular the scepticism and relativism which lie at the heart of their teachings. We know, for example, that the Sophists denied the existence of any unchanging, absolute truth or reality, believing instead that the world is a world of appearance alone.48 The second group realised that to attribute the creation of beings to causes or nature is to defy reason, for the bringing into existence of even the smallest entity – a fly, perhaps, or a seed – requires the kind of power that neither nature nor ‘natural’ causes possess. The insuperable difficulties involved in such beliefs led them eventually to deny the act of creation altogether, and to claim that ‘Nothing can come into existence out of nothing’. Furthermore, seeing that total annihilation was also impossible, they added, “What exists cannot go to nothing.” In other words, they posited a scenario in which the composition and decomposition of beings, and their gathering and dispersal, all occur through the motion of particles and in accordance with pure chance. This kind of reasoning is nothing short of ludicrous, and shows how those who consider themselves to be the most intelligent often turn out to be the most ignorant.49

127

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi’s ‘second group’ refers to those philosophers who, since they could not accept the notion of material causes ‘originating’ other beings, developed the notion that existence could neither emerge from non-existence nor disappear into it. Change, they argued, was not the result of things being originated or brought into existence and then despatched from it; rather, change was simply a result of the coming together and separation of unalterable and indestructible substances that have always existed.50 To posit the existence of eternal, unchangeable substances which, in order to bring about generation and degeneration, somehow merge and then disperse is not only to attribute purposeful change to material causes but also to deny the very act of origination by means of which such substances could have emerged in the first place, let alone continue to exist. Understandably, Nursi gives this particular philosophical doctrine short shrift, dismissing it as ‘ludicrous’ and as evidence not of its supporters’ intelligence but of their ignorance. For him the answer to the former sceptic’s question is clear: Indeed, the One of Pre-Eternal Power Who created the heavens and the earth in six days, every year creates hundreds of thousands of species simultaneously across the face of the globe, and in the space of six weeks every spring fashions a living world more full of art and wisdom than the globe of the earth itself. God creates this world by bestowing external existence on beings which were previously existent in the supramaterial sphere of God’s knowledge only, just as invisible writing is revealed when a certain chemical is applied to it. Through His pre-eternal power, God takes these beings, whose ‘blueprints’ and measures are known to Him pre-eternally, and translates them from relative non-being into concrete material existence. To deny this act of creation, or to deem it impossible or unlikely, is to rival the sophists in ignorance. Yet those who do deny God’s power are themselves absolutely impotent, with nothing at their disposal apart from the faculty of will. They may be as inflated and egoistic as the Pharaohs, yet they are unable to create from nothing, or annihilate, so much the tiniest particle. And so even though nothing comes into existence out of nothing at the hands of ‘natural causes’, out of sheer stupidity they say, “Nothing comes from non-being, and nothing goes to non-being.” And they even extend this absurd principle to the absolutely all-powerful One.51

Nursi’s argument here needs to be teased apart with great care. There is nothing in the Quran to support the notion of creatio ex nihilo or ‘creation from nothing’, especially in the sense of God’s transforming non-existence into existence, which is a logical impossibility. When Nursi talks of God’s creation in this passage, his emphasis is on origination rather than creation: what he is describing is His bestowal of external existence upon beings which previously existed only in the sphere of His knowledge.52 In the Quran, the origination and bringing into existence of beings is described in several places as being the result of direct Divine command. For example: To Him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth: When He decrees a matter, He says to it: “Be!” and it is.53 She said: “O my Lord! How shall I have a son when no man hath touched me?” He said: “Even so: God creates What He wills: When He has decreed a thing, He but says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is! 54

128

  On Nature and Causation For to anything which We have willed, We but say the Word, “Be”, and it is.55 It is not befitting to (the majesty of ) God that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! When He determines a matter, He only says to it, “Be!”, and it is.56 Verily, when He intends a thing, His Command is, “Be”, and it is! 57

The verses which talk of God’s commanding, decreeing or willing a thing into existence through His utterance of the word ‘Be!’ point to a number of important concepts in Quranic cosmology. Most germane to the current discussion is the concept of the origination of beings through the direct command of God, with no help or mediation from other causal agents; the verses revealed in the context of the birth of Jesus, who, like Adam, had no human father to act as the proximate cause for his coming into existence, are of particular interest here. Equally relevant is the fact that origination does not mean that beings are nonexistences which are then somehow made existent: that is not how creatio ex nihilo should be understood. When Nursi talks about beings coming into existence ‘from nothing’, he means that they do not come into existence through the mediation of proximate material causes; rather, their supra-material forms, which exist in the unseen realm of Divine knowledge, are given a concrete material existence in the visible world through the will and power of God. Just as the architect turns the plans he has in his mind into reality by putting them down on paper and then turning them into an actual building, God dresses those supra-material forms which are the object of His knowledge in the clothes of external existence through the power of His will and His command, directly and with no assistance from material causes. Since God’s creative act is a ceaseless one, with beings entering the realm of external existence in a ceaseless and orderly flow, it appears that there are causal connections between beings. However, as we saw in an earlier passage, these connections are simply a necessary fiction which is designed to ‘veil’ the hand of God and thus facilitate the main purpose of creation, which is that man should come to know, love and worship his Creator by a gradual process of unveiling; otherwise, a world without apparent causes would mean a God Who is observed directly, which would run counter to the Divine purpose in bringing man into existence in the first place. However, while origination through the direct Divine command ‘Be!’ is key to God’s creative act, it is not the only manner in which He brings things into existence. Nursi elucidates by saying that God has two ways of creating. The first, as we have just seen, is through the act of origination (ibdā) and invention. This means that He brings a being into existence out of relative non-existence, i.e. apparently out of ‘nothing’. He then creates – also apparently out of nothing – everything the being needs for its continued existence, placing all of its necessities and requirements at its disposal. The second way He creates is through what Nursi calls ‘the art of composition’ (inshā): That is to say, He forms or composes beings out of elements already in existence in order to manifest His Names and to display the endless perfections of His wisdom. Through the law of Divine provision, He commands particles of matter to attend to these beings and to be employed in their composition. God in His absolute power can thus be seen to create in two ways: He originates and He composes. For to annihilate what exists and to bring into being that which does not exist is easy for Him; in fact, it is one of His constant and

129

The Qur’an Revealed  universal laws. To claim, then, that God “cannot give existence to that which does not exist”, or “cannot bring being into existence from non-being” flies in the face of reality: when one considers that in a single spring, the forms and attributes of billions of animate creatures come into existence out of nothing, the futility of such claims becomes all too clear.58

The creational modality known as ibdā may be understood in the sense of instantaneous origination, or creation from what appears to be nothing (creatio ex nihilo), while inshā may be termed ‘compositional’ in so far as it connotes growth and change over time. One is able to locate the Quranic antecedents for these two different kinds of creation mentioned by Nursi in verses such as 36:82, above, where the formula of ‘Be!’ stands for ibdā, and in verses such as 23:78 (It is He Who has created for you (the faculties of ) hearing, sight, feeling and understanding: little thanks it is ye give!), where the word ‘created’ is the translation of the Arabic inshā, connoting composition and development. That the two modalities of creation work in tandem is clear, although how they work in practice is not spelled out precisely, either by the Risale or the Quran. While, it may be argued, both Nursi and the Quran are somewhat ambiguous on this score, there is nothing in either the Risale or the Quranic verses to suggest that the two kinds of creation are irreconcilable. Indeed, the only reason they may seem irreconcilable at first glance is if we fail to bear in mind that these modalities function on different levels of the creational hierarchy, and that only one of these modalities is perceptible to the senses. On one level – the level of inshā – each being is seen to be formed from other beings and developed over time: the nourishment and concomitant growth and evolution of the embryo in the womb over time is a salient example. On a more fundamental level, however, beings are created – and re-created - from instant to instant ex nihilo. On the level of inshā, the creation of a being is analogous to the gradual unfolding of a feature film: it is developmental, with one scene giving rise to the next in an unbroken and seemingly causal sequence. On the level of ibdā, however, each being is made up of a succession of instants that are in fact causally unrelated, much like the individual frames of a film. Our perception of creation as the formation of beings from other beings persists partly because of our inherent inability, as creatures immersed in the space-time continuum, to discern the direct ‘hand of God’ which, the Quran asserts, creates all beings simply by commanding them to ‘Be!’. In short, we see the moving film, and not the individual frames as they are ‘shot’. In the visible, time-bound realm of which we are a part, then, we see God’s creative act in the form of an apparent causal sequence; in the unseen, timeless realm of malakūt or ghayb (the ‘hidden realm’), God brings into existence each being – each effect – directly, recreating continuously, with nothing persisting for more than an instant. The notion of God’s ‘continuous creation’ of beings will be elucidated in much more detail in Chapter Four.

Conclusion

To sum up, Nursi’s rejection of causal efficacy brings creaturely focus back on God, Who is seen not as one who created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh, but one whose creation and sustaining of the cosmos is continuous and continual: were He for one unimaginable instant to withdraw from His creation, everything would topple into oblivion.

130

  On Nature and Causation The enigma of God’s continuous creation through His direct command of ‘Be!’ – however it is presented philosophically or theologically – serves to prevent man from attributing ownership to causes and, by extension, to himself. For as Nursi shows elsewhere in the Risale, man’s predilection to attribute efficacy to causes stems from his innate desire to claim ownership over everything he is and does himself. Nursi’s repudiation of any necessary causal relationship between beings, supported by the notion of continuous creation, is also a repudiation of the notion of human ownership of personal acts and attributes. Thus God’s continuous creative activity, which is direct and unaided by causal agents of any kind, ultimately strips man of all claims to godhood and returns the true ownership of all attributes of perfection to their rightful Owner.

131

Chapter Four Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels Introduction

That life (h. ayāt), spirit (rūh. ) and angels (malā’ika) should be treated in the same chapter reflects for the most part the inextricability of the links which Nursi believes exist between them. For him, the very goal of creation itself is that God’s name ‘The Ever-Living One’ (alH .  ayy) be made manifest in the form of creatures who, by virtue of the reflection of this name upon them, may come consciously to know, worship and love the One who has given them life. The famous Prophetic Tradition that is a staple of Nursian cosmology – “I was a hidden treasure, so I created creation that it might know Me” – alludes, among other things, to the fact that the cosmos is brought into being as a mirror in which God ‘observes’ His own attributes. Among those attributes is life, and so one may extrapolate from the Tradition and conclude that one of the overriding reasons for the creation of living creatures is so that the Ever-Living might be perceived. Life, as we shall see, is linked closely to the notion of spirit, but is not, as some may think, identical with it. All that is living does not have spirit, which in Nursian terms is the ‘choicest essence’ of life, reserved for creatures at the apex of the ontological hierarchy. The ‘choicest’ of those beings endowed with spirit, Nursi asserts, are those who possess consciousness, and the being that is most conscious of all is man. Life, spirit and consciousness, then, find their supreme expression in the creation of the human being, who is not only the most comprehensive locus of manifestation (maz.  har) of all of the Divine Names, but also their most perfect potential exhibitor (muz.  hir). As such, man is arguably more ‘alive’ than any other creature in the cosmos, and is thus perfectly placed to act as the mirror par excellence in which God ‘observes’ His own name, ‘The Ever-Living One’. It is perfectly justifiable, then, that life and spirit should be considered together. But what of angels? Belief in angels is, along with belief in God, His Books, His Prophets and the Resurrection, one of the five core theological principles in which Muslims are expected to believe through intellectual investigation (tah. qīq) rather than blind imitation (taqlīd); in other words, they are principles which are, according to Muslim theologians, to be accepted by virtue of the endeavours of human ratiocination rather than merely as a

133

The Qur’an Revealed  result of scriptural diktat and ‘emulation’, as is the case with Muslim law and the principles of jurisprudence. That belief in angels constitutes one of the ‘articles of faith’ mentioned by the Quran should tell us something about their significance as an integral component of the Quranic cosmological schema. Yet belief in angels is what one may almost call the ‘forgotten principle of belief ’. Muslim theological history is replete with debates on the nature of God and His attributes, on the veracity - or otherwise - of Divinely-revealed scriptures, on the nature of prophethood and the Resurrection. Serious theological discussions on the nature and function of angels are, however, conspicuous by their absence, particularly as far as early modern and contemporary Muslim religious discourse is concerned. Classical Muslim angelology is also almost virgin territory, with the lion’s share of exegetical and theological perspectives on the subject taking their cue from Judaeo-Christian notions, many of which have crossed over into Islam. While classical and late medieval philosophers – particularly those of theosophical persuasion, such as the 16th century scholar Mullā S. adrā – did attempt intellectual discussion on the subject of angels, their treatment is sketchy and never really gets to grips with what is, after all, a principle of belief the significance of which is second only to belief in God Himself.1 Nursi is the first scholar – classical or modern – to deal at length with the nature and function of angels in Muslim cosmology, not only in the context of what it means for things to be ‘living’ but also, and perhaps more importantly, in the context of what it means for things to come into the realm of external existence as created beings.

Life (hayāt) Look, then, to the signs of God’s mercy - how He restores life to the earth after its death - verily He it is Who quickens the dead, for He is powerful over all things.2 God! There is no god but He, the Living, the Self-Subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep…3

Science has yet to provide a definitive answer to the question, ‘What is life?’ Scholars in different disciplines have different definitions: physicists and chemists say it is one thing, biologists another, and neither is complete. Physicists say that the animate is distinguishable from the inanimate by its ability to produce negative entropy. Biologists say that a living being is one which exhibits all or most of the following: homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction. Neither of these is an actual definition of life: all that scientists are able to do is describe the different facets of life. A comprehensive and universally accepted definition of life – a statement of what life actually is rather than what it means for a living being to possess life – does not exist, and may never be forthcoming. If scientists fail demonstrably in their attempts to define life, theologians do little better. Theologians, unlike scientists, may be able to identify what they believe is the source of life, but when it comes to saying what life actually is, they too are inevitably found wanting. Indeed, it may be that when it comes to life, a description of its features is the best we can expect. There is no treatise in the Risale-i Nur collection which is dedicated solely to life (h. ayāt), although the issue is discussed in numerous places and with various levels of

134

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels engagement. One section in which Nursi gives a particularly in-depth exposition of the significance of life comes in his Thirtieth Flash, where he discusses the Divine name ‘EverLiving’, and it is this section that we explore here. At the beginning of his discourse on the ‘Ever-Living’, Nursi poses the question, ‘What is life and what is its true nature and purpose?’ His answer is a rich and densely packed one that calls for careful unpacking and deliberation. However, as is the case with thinkers from other disciplines, Nursi provides us not with a definition of life but with a description of it, within his own frame of reference as a theologian.

Life as the light of all creation

For Nursi, life is nothing less than the end for which the whole of the cosmos has been created: Life is the most important aim (ghāya) of the universe; it is its greatest result (natīja) and its most brilliant light. It is the distilled essence (khulās.a) of the universe and its subtlest (lat. īf) leaven. It is its most perfect (mukammal) fruit, its most elevated perfection (kamāl), its finest beauty (jamāl) and its most attractive adornment. Life is the secret of the universe’s indivisibility (wah. da) and the bond of its unity (ittih. ād); life is the very source of the universe’s perfections. With regard to art and nature, it is a most wondrous being endowed with spirit (dhirūh. ); it is a miraculous reality (h. aqīqa) which makes the tiniest creature like a whole universe. Not only is it the means of a whole universe being situated in the tiniest of animate creatures, within that creature it functions as a sort of index of the huge universe beyond; life is a most extraordinary miracle of Divine power which connects the animate creature to most other beings and turns it into a tiny cosmos of its own. Moreover, life is a wondrous Divine art which enlarges the infinitesimally small and renders it in a sense infinitely large: it makes a particular (juz’) like a universal (kull) or a world (‘ālam), and shows that with regard to dominicality, the universe is an indivisible whole – a vast universal that cannot be broken into parts and which accepts participation from no other creator. Life is a wonder of dominical creation comprising the manifestation of numerous Names of God such as Merciful, Provider, Compassionate, Munificent and All-Wise, and as such subjects itself to many truths such as sustenance, wisdom, grace and mercy, while being the source and origin of all the senses like sight, hearing and touch. 4

Nursi’s opening paragraph contains more than two dozen descriptions of life, each more fulsome than the last. Life is not only the source of the perfections of the cosmos, it is also the ultimate aim of creation. Life is the force which endows the cosmos with unity, animating the tiniest of created forms and turning it into a living realm in its own right, and then joining it with all other realms into one vast, coherent whole. More importantly, life is the means by which all of the other Divine names are made manifest. Without life, beings would lack sentience, and without sentience, the ‘Divine Treasure’ would remain unknown. Life, then, in Nursian terms at least, is all. Life is like a wondrous machine in the vast workshop of the cosmos which continuously cleanses everywhere, purifies everything, illuminates and allows progress. And living

135

The Qur’an Revealed  bodies – the dwelling places of life – are guest-houses, schools and barracks for the instruction and illumination of caravan after caravan of particles, enabling them to perform their duties. Put quite simply, the Ever-Living, Self-Subsistent One makes subtle this dark, transient, lowly world, illuminating it and bestowing on it a sort of permanence, preparing it to go to another world that is everlasting. 5

Life and the absence of apparent causes

As we have seen in Chapter Three on nature and causation, Nursi describes material causes not as actual agents of creation and change but as a ‘veil’ beneath which the ‘hand of God’ is at work. Whatever emerges into the phenomenal world is created directly by God. However, as a result of the fact that the limited being immersed in time and space is unable to perceive the Absolute as It actually is, each creative act is ‘veiled’ by a material cause. For example, while it is the power of God, along with numerous other attributes, which facilitates directly the growth of a plant, the direct effect of the dominical workings of Divine power on the plant are hidden behind the screen of material factors such as sunlight, rain and the nutrients in the soil – the things to which, as ‘causes’, the growth of the plant is commonly, but in fact erroneously, attributed. There is indeed a connection between cause and effect, but as Nursi points out on numerous occasions, the connection is only an apparent one: in reality, causes and their effects issue from the same source simultaneously, with the ‘cause’ only seeming to produce its ‘effect’. In reality, the material cause is simply the ‘occasion’ for the appearance of the effect, with the fact that one is temporally prior to the other leading us to believe that they are actually causally linked. The notion that causes act as veils draped over God’s ‘hand of power’ is another way of saying that causation is a necessary fiction: it is an illusion that is needed in order for God to be hidden from view and thus open to ‘discovery’ by man through his life journey. Apparent causation is thus a fixed feature of the time and space-bound realm that is material existence; without the veil of material causes, those who are within that realm would be unable to function. The objective, at least as far as the Quran is concerned, is to learn to see past the illusion and ‘unveil’ the hand of God in creation in order to arrive at the truth of Divine dominicality and sovereignty. Yet life would appear to be an exception, for according to Nursi, it manifests itself without a ‘veil’. In other words, life has no material cause as such to which it might be attributed. In Nursi’s own words, Life has two faces: one which looks to this world and one which looks to the realm of the unseen. Both of its faces – its inner face and its outer face – are shining, transparent, elevated and unsullied by dirt or defect. It is an exceptional creature on which apparent causes have not been placed so as to veil the disposer of power: this is in order to show clearly that it has emerged directly, without either veil or means, from the hand of dominical power.6

Nursi then begins to rationalise the exceptionality of life by invoking first the notion of degrees of manifestation which pertain to the other Divine names. It is clear that in everything in the universe there is goodness and beauty, with evil and ugliness being very minor and subsidiary notions, functioning simply as units of

136

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels measurement to make manifest the different degrees of goodness and beauty and to augment and multiply their realities. Evil which makes known that which is good cannot really be evil and is, in a sense, good itself, while ugliness which makes known that which is beautiful cannot in reality be ugly. However, in the superficial view of some, apparent ugliness and evil appear to be very real, as do apparent disasters and calamities. Now in order that their complaints and anger be deflected away from the true Source of these apparent aberrancies, namely the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One, apparent causes have been made a veil in order that apparently repugnant things and events should not be attributed to the Creator’s dominical power. These causes cannot create, but they have been placed there in order to preserve the dignity, sacredness and unblemished nature of Divine acts of disposal.7

Here, Nursi explains that in order for the Divine attributes to be made manifest in creation, their opposites – their apparent opposites – must be accorded some kind of external reality, if not external existence. Thus in order for the countless degrees of Divine beauty to become known, ugliness is needed. However, ugliness has no instantiation in the phenomenal world: it is merely the absence of beauty, and as such plays the role of a ‘unit of measurement’, there simply for the sake of comparison and in order to render beauty discernible. We have already discussed in Chapters Two and Three how the juxtaposition of apparent polar opposites makes visible the whole spectrum of Divine names. In order for there to be light, the absence of light, or that which we call darkness, is necessary; in order for wisdom to be made manifest, the absence of wisdom, or that which we call folly, is needed, and so on. Here, however, Nursi comes at the issue from a slightly different angle. The notion that causality is a ‘veil’ which screens Divine ‘dignity’ is another way of saying that for the spiritual traveller at the beginning of his journey towards God, it is more appropriate to attribute apparent ugliness and evil to causes rather than to God. In other words, as well as being a necessary illusion that man must ultimately strip away in order to progress towards God, it is also an illusion that saves those with an imperfect understanding of God from becoming alienated from Him before they are able to understand in time and with experience that the things they find abhorrent are only apparently so. Nursi illustrates this with a story about the angel of death: Azrā’īl (PBWH), the taker of human lives, once prayed to Almighty God concerning his duty of seizing the spirits of the dying. He said: “Your servants will be angry with me because of this.” God answered him, saying: “I shall place the veil of illness and calamity between your duty and the dying, so that they aim their arrows of complaint and objection not at you but at those veils.” In other words, the duty of the angel of death is a veil in the same way that other causes are apparent veils, so that the anger and complaints of those who do not see the true, beautiful face of death - beautiful for the people of belief - and do not know the manifestation of mercy on it, are not directed to the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One. Yes, dignity and grandeur require that causes be curtain-holders to the Hand of Power in the mind’s view, while Divine Unity and Glory demand that causes draw back their hands from the true effect.8

137

The Qur’an Revealed  In other words, it is not everyone who can understand that death is in fact merely a transition from one realm to another and, as such, a thing of beauty that is not to be feared. In order to deflect the fear and loathing that people have regarding death away from God, illnesses and other apparent causes of death have been instated as scapegoats, in a sense, to protect the unaware from the danger of attributing things to God directly but without a proper understanding of what such attribution actually means. Where life is concerned, however, the need for a ‘veil’ appears to be superfluous: Since both the external and the inward, and the outer and inner faces of life are without dirt, defect or fault, there is nothing to invite complaints and objections, as there is no filth or ugliness contrary to the dignity and sacredness of power. These faces of life, therefore, have been surrendered directly, without veil, to the hand of the “life-giving, restoring, resurrecting” Name of the Ever-Living Self-Subsistent One. Light is the same, and so are existence and the giving of existence. For this reason, creation and the giving of existence look directly without veil to the power of the All-Glorious One. Even, since rain is a sort of life and mercy, the time of its precipitation has not been made subject to a regular law, so that at all times of need hands will be raised to the Divine Court to seek mercy. If, like the rising of the sun, rain had been subject to a law, that vital bounty would not have been sought and asked for at times of need.9

Since life, Nursi says, is ‘without dirt, defect or fault’, it does not give rise to complaints and thus there is no need for it to be ‘veiled’ by a material cause. Is it possible that life is unsullied because it is not ‘mixed’ with its apparent opposite? As Nursi shows, beauty, for example, is made discernible only by the fact that it is ‘intermingled’, in a manner of speaking, with its apparent opposite. In other words, beauty exists in countless degrees, and the countless degrees of beauty are visible only because there are degrees of ugliness – apparent ugliness – against which that beauty may be viewed. But are there degrees of life? Surely something is either alive or it is not: nothing can be more alive than anything else, although there are clearly many different types of manifestation of life, commensurate with the nature and receptivity of the living being in question. And while ugliness is the absence of beauty, death cannot be said to be the absence of life, because death is an act, a change from one form of existence to another: unlike ugliness, it is not a state. Furthermore, being dead is also relative to the world from which one dies. For example, the embryo ‘dies’ as an embryo and becomes a living child, just as the caterpillar ‘dies’ as a caterpillar and becomes a butterfly. And so life and death are arguably not part of the same spectrum in the way that beauty and ugliness are, even though ugliness is only apparent. In other words, the fact that life is ‘unveiled’ has to do with the fundamental difference between life and other attributes. Existence, too, is unveiled, writes Nursi – although without qualifying his assertion. One reason, perhaps, is because things either exist or do not: there may be degrees of existence insofar as different beings exhibit more Divine names than others, but this is surely a different issue. If one being exhibits more Divine names than another, it is possible, perhaps, to describe its existence as being more comprehensive or ‘intense’ than that of the other. However, it would be absurd to say that being X is ‘more existent’ than being Y. Both are equally existent in the sense that they are both present in the external realm of creation.

138

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels They both have a share of existence and thus from this perspective are absolutely equal, even if the existence of one is more complex, comprehensive or ‘intense’ than that of the other. Since existence, like life, is ‘unsullied’ and therefore does not attract complaints, it too is ‘unveiled’ and has no dependence for its manifestation on material causes. Life and existence are thus bestowed on creation directly by the ‘hand of Dominical power’, in a way that defies explanation and in a manner that renders both phenomena indefinable. And since they are ‘unveiled’, Nursi argues, there is no way that they cannot, in all good conscience, be attributed to anything other than God.

Life as a cause for gratitude

If life is the light and ‘purest essence’ of the cosmos, it follows on that one of its key purposes is the elicitation of thanks, praise and worship, all of which are in a sense demanded by God but needed only by the creation itself, and mankind in particular. Yes, the Ever-Living, Self-Subsistent Maker of the universe certainly wants thanks from living creatures in return for His making Himself known and loved through so many boundless sorts of bounties, and He wants their praise and laudation in return for His precious arts, and for them to respond with worship and obedience to His dominical commands. And so, in accordance with this mystery of dominicality, it is because thanks and worship are the most important purpose of all sorts of life and therefore of the whole universe that with fervour, intensity and sweetness the Miraculous Quran urges thanks and worship. It states repeatedly, “Worship is for God alone, thanks are due only to Him, and praise is particular to Him.” It is in order to state that thanks and praise should go directly to its True Owner that verses such as It is He Who gives life and death, and to Him [is due] the alternation of night day ; It is He Who gives life and death; and when He decides upon an affair, He says to it: “Be!”, and it is; and [He] gives life to the earth after its death 10 point out that He holds life together with all its attributes, without veil, in the grasp of His power, and reject intermediaries explicitly, ascribing life directly to the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One’s hand of power and restricting it to Him.11

As the ‘light’ of the cosmos, life makes known to man the whole panoply of Divine names, which are the sources of all bounties, including life itself. Life, then, can be said to exist in order to reveal itself, and to show man that without life, the rest of its concomitants – the countless names and attributes of God – would be unknowable, along with God Himself. Here, Nursi revisits the theme of ‘veil-less’ attributes discussed in the previous section. True worship, he says, comes with the recognition that God’s bounties come from him directly. Nursi’s contention was that life, the greatest bounty of all, comes without a ‘veil’ and is thus attributable directly to God. He now takes this a step further, reiterating that in order for man’s worship, thanks and laudation to be truly worthy of his rank as vicegerent, he must endeavour to see all things which are means of thanks as coming directly from Him, despite the existence of apparent intermediaries. Moreover, the verses For God is He Who gives [all] sustenance, Lord of Power, Steadfast forever ; And when I am ill, it is He Who cures me; and He is the One that sends down rain

139

The Qur’an Revealed  [even] after [men] have given up all hope 12 show that things which are the means of thanks after life like sustenance, healing and rain, which invite gratitude and thanks and stimulate a feeling of love and praise, also pertain directly to the Healing Provider, and that causes and intermediaries are a veil; that is, that sustenance, healing and rain are particular and restricted to the power of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One. To express that they come directly from Him without veil, in accordance with the rules of grammar the restrictive pronoun - “For God is He Who” [Hu al-Razzaq] and “He is the One that” [Hu alladhi] - has been used. The one who gives medicines their properties and creates their effects is the True Healer alone.13

In this final paragraph, there seems at first glance to be an inconsistency, for initially Nursi describes sustenance, healing and rain as being bestowed upon man by means of causes and intermediaries which are nothing but veils, before then asserting that these things come directly from God ‘without a veil’. Sustenance comes to man in the form of food and drink, healing in the form of medicine and rain comes as rain, itself a means of sustenance and, indeed, healing. Food and drink, medicine and rain are all intermediaries and veils for the manifestation of the Divine names Sustainer, Healer and All-Merciful. However, the bestowing of food and drink, medicine and rain is in fact nothing more than the bestowal of existence and life itself. And so while the acts of sustaining, healing and mercy are indeed veiled from man by apparent causes, the giving of life and existence, neither of which, as we have already seen, is covered by a causal ‘veil’, is effected directly and without intermediary by God. It is recognition of this reality, Nursi says, which imbues man’s worship of his Creator with true depth and sincerity.

Life and the six pillars of belief

In Nursi’s view, the reality that is life also offers indications of the existence and veracity of the six fundamentals of belief: Divine unity; angels; prophethood; revelation; the hereafter; and the principle of Divine determining (qadar). Shining objects on the face of the earth glistening with the sun’s reflection, and bubbles on the surface of the sea sparkling and dying away with flashes of light and the bubbles that follow on after them again acting as mirrors to the imaginary miniature suns, show self-evidently that those flashes are the reflections and manifestations of a single, elevated sun. They speak of the sun’s existence with various tongues and point to it with their fingers of light. In the same way, through the greatest manifestation of the Ever-Living and SelfSubsistent One’s Name of Giver of Life, the living creatures on the earth and in the sea shine through Divine power, and in order to make way for those that follow after them, utter “O Living One!” and vanish behind the veil of the Unseen, thus indicating and testifying to the life and necessary existence of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One, Who possesses eternal life.14

The sun analogy is one that Nursi uses on numerous occasions in the Risale-i Nur. Shining as it does on all objects able to reflect it, the sun reproduces itself, so to speak, in the form of the countless miniature suns visible in its countless reflections. Everything is thus filled with

140

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels light, and while it may appear at first glance that the light is emanating from the tiny sun that one sees on the luminous surface of the object, be it a bubble or a shard of glass, it soon becomes clear that this light, as all other lights like it, comes from the same, single source, namely the sun that is ninety-three million miles away from the earth. The sun here symbolises Divine Unity, and especially the way that this Unity is made manifest through the medium of life. All animate creatures appear to ‘shine’ with life, Nursi says, and while at first glance it may appear to be self-generated, the fact that it is taken from them as they disappear behind the ‘veil of the unseen’ points to the fact that the ‘light of life’ emanates from a single, life-giving ‘Sun’ – namely the Ever-Living, Life-Giving Creator of the cosmos. Moreover, just as the light from the sun contains within it the seven colours of the spectrum, the attribute of life points to the seven essential attributes of the Creator, of which life is arguably the most significant. So too, all the evidences testifying to Divine knowledge, the effect of which is apparent in the ordering of all creatures; and all the proofs demonstrating the power which has disposal over the universe; and all the evidences proving the will and volition which governs and directs the universe; and all the signs and miracles proving the missions of the prophets, the channels of Divine revelation and dominical speech; and all the evidences attesting to the seven Divine attributes - all these indicate, denote and testify unanimously to the life of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One. For if a thing has sight, it also has life; and if it has hearing, that is a sign of life; and if it has speech, it points to the existence of life; and if it has will and choice, it shows life. Thus attributes like absolute power, comprehensive will and all-embracing knowledge, the existence of which is clear and certain on account of their works and effects in the universe, testify to the life and necessary existence of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One, the eternal life which illuminates the whole universe with a single of its shadows and, through a single of its manifestations, gives life to the realm of the Hereafter, even its very particles.15

Life, then, would appear in one sense to be the foundational name of the Divine, acting almost as a substratum for the other six essential attributes of knowledge, power, will, hearing, seeing and speaking – none of which can inhere in a Being that is devoid of life. For Nursi, then, it is the attribute of life which, more than any other, acts as an indicator of the necessary existence and unity of the Creator. Life also serves for Nursi as indirect proof of the existence of the entities known as malā’ika, the traditional English translation of which is ‘angels’. The most important result of the universe is life, with living beings spread more widely than any others. They populate the caravanserai of the earth with their travelling caravans, coming and going as the caravanserai empties itself and refills in order to renew and multiply those beings that possess life. Life is everywhere, even on rotting matter, where it forms masses of vibrant micro-organisms. Moreover, consciousness (shu‘ūr) and intellect (‘aql), the purest distillations of life, and spirit (rūh. ), its most subtle and stable substance, are created in great profusion here: it is as though the earth has been infused with life, consciousness, intellect and spirit, and inhabited in that way. Since this is the case, those

141

The Qur’an Revealed  celestial bodies which are larger, subtler, more luminous and more significant than the earth can surely not be devoid of life and consciousness. That is to say, in accordance with the mystery of life, those celestial bodies – the planets, the stars and other heavenly objects – must be home to living, conscious inhabitants with forms suitable to their surroundings. These beings are the angels, recipients of the Divine address and tasked to endow those celestial bodies with their living states, thus demonstrating the result of the creation of the heavens.16

Here Nursi extrapolates from the profusion of life and consciousness on earth to posit the existence throughout the vast reaches of the heavens of entities that also possess those faculties, albeit in a manner suited to their environment and its particular mode of creation. If life is the main objective of creation, Nursi argues, is it conceivable that it should be concentrated solely on the globe of the earth? If life is the foundation stone of the whole cosmic endeavour, is it possible that worlds far vaster and clearly more significant than our relatively tiny world should not possess entities that are both alive and conscious? Since the third part of this chapter is devoted wholly to the principle of belief in angels, we will postpone any further discussion of their nature and function until then. Suffice here to say that for Nursi, the ‘pillar of belief ’ in angels, which ‘represent’ the life of other worlds, is proven indirectly by the existence of life in this world. Life also provides indirect proof of revelation and prophethood, Nursi argues: The universe was created for life, and life is a greatest manifestation of the Pre-Eternal Self-Subsistent One; it is a perfect inscription of His and a most beautiful work of Divine artistry. Now if there were no revealed books or prophets, that Pre-Eternal Life would remain unknown. For just as it is through his speech that we realise a person is alive, it is through the words of revelation and the messages of the prophets that we understand the words and speech of the One Who speaks to us from the realm of the unseen, from behind the veil of created beings. Given this, we may conclude that just as the phenomenon of life in the cosmos testifies decisively to the necessary existence of the Pre-Eternal, Ever-Living One, it also indicates the pillar of belief in revelation and prophethood, which are the rays, manifestations and channels of communication of that Pre-Eternal Life. And since the prophethood of Muhammad (PBWH) and the Quranic revelation are like the spirit and intellect of life, it may be said that their truth is as certain as the truth of the existence of life itself.17

While life may be known experientially, without the aid of revelation, the existence of the giver of life – the ‘Pre-Eternal, Self-Subsistent One’ – is known through the medium of revelation and prophethood. If the purpose of creation is life, Nursi tells us, and the purpose of life is that its most exalted fruit – humankind – should come to recognise, acknowledge and worship the Ever-Living One, then life must also necessitate the existence of revelation and prophethood, through which the eternal life of the Ever-Living One may be made known. Revelation takes place through the medium of speech, which itself is dependent on life. However, Nursi argues that it cannot be communicated by just any living, speaking being: for revelation to be revelation, the life which informs it will of necessity be of the most elevated kind.

142

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels Life is the distilled essence of the universe, and consciousness and sense perception are distilled from life and are the essence of life. The intellect too is a distillation of consciousness and sense perception, while the spirit is the pure, unsullied substance of life, and its stable and autonomous essence. Similarly, the physical and spiritual life of Muhammad (PBWH) is the quintessence of life and spirit of the universe, while his prophethood is the very purest essence distilled from the senses, consciousness and intellect of the whole cosmos. Indeed, one may say that the life of Muhammad (PBWH) is, through the testimony of its works, the very life of the life of the universe, while his prophethood is the consciousness and light of the universe’s consciousness. As for the Quranic revelation, it is, by virtue of its living truths, the spirit of the life of the cosmos and the quintessence of its intellect. Indeed, if the light of the prophethood of Muhammad (PBWH) were to depart from the cosmos, the cosmos would perish. And if the Quran were to depart, madness would descend on the cosmos and doomsday would most certainly be the result.18

Disclosure of the reality of the Ever-Living One through the medium of revelation is, then, vouchsafed to a being who is in effect the purest instance of life itself – in this case the Prophet Muhammad. While life in general is the purpose of the cosmos, according to Nursi, Muhammad’s life in particular is the purpose of life itself. The notion of Muhammad as the reason for God’s creation of all beings, and the concept of the ‘Muhammadan light’ as the means through which all other entities come into existence, are not issues that we are able to explore further here, and readers are referred to other chapters in which Nursi’s ideas regarding the centrality of the Prophet to the cosmic scheme are discussed in detail.19 Life also provides indirect proof, Nursi asserts, of the existence of a hereafter and of immortality. For life, he argues, is the most important ‘fruit’ of the universe and, as such, the very purpose of creation; given this, it is unthinkable that it should be restricted to this ‘fleeting, brief, deficient, painful worldly existence’. The aim and result of the tree of life, the immensity of which is understood through the properties enumerated at the beginning of this treatise, is rather eternal life and the life of the Hereafter; it is life in the realm of bliss, the very stones, trees and earth of which are alive. For conscious beings and especially for man, the tree of life, decked out with this many significant members, would otherwise remain without fruit, benefit, purpose and reality. Then man, who is the most exalted of all beings in the universe, and whose capital and faculties are twenty times greater and more numerous than that of a sparrow, would fall lower than a sparrow in respect of the happiness of life, and become the most unhappy, the most debased of wretches.20

As Nursi demonstrates in Chapter Eight of this book in his discourse on the existence of the hereafter, man is a creature whose innate desires, capacities and potentialities are such that they are superfluous to the requirements of a world that is as limited as the visible realm. Just as the human embryo has organs and members which it cannot use there, and which have been intended clearly for use in a realm outside the confines of the womb, man is a being with faculties that cannot be given full expression or achieve satiety in this limited, ephemeral earthly existence. Were life to be limited to this realm only, man’s faculties –

143

The Qur’an Revealed  including his inherent desire for eternal existence – would become a source of endless pain and feelings of futility. Furthermore, through dwelling on the pains of the past and fears of the future, the intellect, the most precious of bounties, would continuously wound the human heart; because it mixes nine pains with a single pleasure, it would become the most calamitous affliction. Such a thing would be inconceivable. And so the life of this world proves decisively the pillar of belief in the Hereafter and, in the spring, places before our eyes hundreds of thousands of examples of the resurrection of the dead.21

The other Divine attributes which are bound up with life also necessitate that life be eternal rather than ephemeral: The All-Powerful Disposer of Affairs prepares with wisdom, grace and mercy in your garden and country all the things necessary for your life. He knows and hears even the tiny, particular prayer for food offered by your stomach through its desire for continued existence, and He gratifies the stomach, showing through innumerable delicious foods, which He sends to you at the appropriate time, that He accepts its prayer. Given that He does all this, is it at all possible that he would not accept man’s most urgent, important prayer – the prayer for immortality – and create the hereafter and paradise, for the sake of which man was created in the first place? Is it at all possible that He would not hear this most powerful prayer, which rings out from the earth and up to the highest heavens? Is it really conceivable that He would not consider man’s needs to be as important as the needs of a mere stomach, and that He would not gratify Him, thus causing him to deny Divine wisdom and mercy? Surely such a thing is inconceivable.22

If God attends to the material needs and ‘active prayers’ of the lowliest of organs such as the human stomach, Nursi argues, surely He would not ignore the spiritual need of man for eternal life? If God hears the tiniest whisper of the lowliest form of life and supplies it with what it needs for its earthly existence, why would He ignore “the thunderous voice of the greatest and most valuable, most subtle embodiments of life?” 23 Is it possible, Nursi asks, that God should equip a common soldier with the greatest care and attention, but disregard a whole army, particularly if it is efficient and obedient? Is it possible that He should see an atom but not the sun, or hear the whirring of a mosquito but not hear the roar of thunder? Moreover, Nursi says, would it be consonant with God’s power and wisdom, or with His mercy and compassion, if He were to condemn to annihilation the manifestation of life – namely man – which, more than any other creature, manifests His names so perfectly? Would the intellect accept a creator who would despatch to nothingness the human spirit – the very quintessence of life – and thus alienate the whole of humanity from Himself in the process? Does reason not recoil from the idea that God would wound man in such a vicious manner by reducing His mercy to little more than a cruel joke? Why would God, by extinguishing the light of His love, make man deny Him? For Nursi, none of this is conceivable. The absolute beauty which is manifest in creation, he says, is exempt from such ugliness, and the mercy which permeates everything can never allow the possibility of such cruelty. Consequently, he concludes, the existence

144

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels of life in this world points to the existence of eternal life in the next, as attested to by both faith and reason.24 Finally, life also provides indirect proof, according to Nursi, of the pillar of belief in ‘Divine determining’ (qadar).25 Often translated misleadingly as ‘fate’ or ‘predestination’, qadar has nothing to do with the predetermination of human actions in the sense of stripping man of free will or absolving him of responsibility for his deeds: this is a misconception born out of a skewed reading by certain scholars - both Muslim and non-Muslim – of the theological debates which took place around the issue of Divine will and human freedom in the early centuries of Muslim theological debate. As part of the term qad.  ā wa qadar, or ‘Divine Decree and Determining’, qadar actually pertains to an aspect of Divine knowledge, and describes the process whereby things are brought into being by God in accordance with a preordained plan which determines their precise forms, proportions, life spans and various other characteristics. The term qadar means God’s determining, before a thing enters the phenomenal world, of how it will be from the point of view of creation once it comes into being. Through the principle of qadar, we understand, Nursi says, that the creation of all beings is effected with such order and precision that it is impossible to imagine that they might have been brought into being without first having been planned. The fact that beings appear in the phenomenal world ‘fit for purpose’, with form and proportion tailored to their needs, serves for Nursi as evidence of their prior existence in the knowledge of God, Who brings all things into being in accordance with their preordained blueprints. This subject is discussed at length in Chapter Twelve and it is beyond the scope of this present chapter to elaborate on it any further. Suffice to say here that for Nursi, the mystery of life is one of the most salient indirect proofs of the principle of qadar : Now life is the light of the Manifest World: it dominates it and is the result and aim of existence. It is the most comprehensive mirror of the Creator of the universe and the most perfect sample and index of dominical activity, and may even be described as a kind of programme. Given this, there can be no doubt that the mystery of life necessitates that the creatures in the World of the Unseen - that is, the past and the future - which have been and will come are predisposed to conform to order, regularity, being known and observed, specific individual existence and the creative commands of God, which in one respect are their very lives.26

As the ‘result and aim’ of existence, life, Nursi explains here, is not something which is restricted to the ‘visible realm’ – the phenomenal world of the present. Existence, in whatever form, betokens life, and to exist within the unseen realm of Divine knowledge prior to emerging into the phenomenal world is to possess life, albeit in a form that is compatible with the conditions in that realm. Nursi illustrates his point with an analogy of a tree and its roots, seeds and fruits: The original seed of a tree and its root, as well as the seeds contained in the fruits it bears, all manifest a sort of life no less than the tree itself; indeed, they encompass within themselves laws of life more subtle than those of the tree. Similarly, the seeds and roots left by last autumn, before the present spring, as well as the seeds and roots that will be left to subsequent springs after this spring has departed - all carry the manifestations of life, just like this spring, and are subject to the laws of life.27

145

The Qur’an Revealed  While a superficial comparison between a vibrant, healthy tree and the small dry seed from which such a tree emerges may lead one to think that the greater manifestation of life lies within the tree, Nursi argues that, strictly speaking, this is not the case. If a seed is germinable, not only does it possess life itself but it also includes within itself the life ‘programme’ of the entity which will grow out of it in the future.28 Whether they are the seeds scattered by last year’s tree or the seeds yet to be produced from the fruit of this year’s, life – in different forms – permeates all of them. The same applies, Nursi concludes, to the parts of the vast ‘tree of creation’: In just the same way, each of the branches and twigs of the cosmic tree has a past and a future. All beings have a chain consisting of past and future stages and circumstances. The multiple existences and stages of each species and each member of each species, existing in Divine knowledge, forms a chain of being in God’s knowledge, and, like its external existence, the existence it has in God’s knowledge is a manifestation of universal life that draws all the aspects of its life from these meaningful and vital Tablets of Divine Determining.29

From Nursi’s analogy we understand that a being which exists in the knowledge of God prior to its emergence into the phenomenal realm that is the visible world of creation is akin to a germinable seed: not only does it possess life in its own right as an object of Divine knowledge, it also includes within it the ‘programme’ of its future life in the phenomenal realm. The fact that the World of Spirits - which is one form of the World of the Unseen - is full of the essence of life, the matter of life and the spirits, which are the substances and essence of life, of a certainty demands and requires that the past and future - which are another form of the World of the Unseen and its second segment - should also receive the manifestation of life.30

That the unseen realm is also the realm of the spirit – the substance which makes life what it is – provides further evidence, Nursi argues here, that both the past and the future are also loci for the manifestation of the ‘Ever-Living’ One. The perfect order, the meaningful circumstances and vital fruits and stages inherent in the existence of a thing within God’s knowledge, also demonstrate the manifestation of a sort of life. Such a manifestation of life, which is the light emitted by the sun of eternal life, cannot be limited to this Manifest World, this present time, this external existence. On the contrary, each world receives the manifestation of that light in accordance with its capacity, and the cosmos together with all its worlds is alive and illumined through it. Otherwise, as the misguided imagine, beneath a temporary and apparent life, each world would be a vast and terrible corpse, a dark ruin.31

Life and qadar – Divine determining – are thus, Nursi argues, closely connected, arguably to the point of being intertwined inextricably, be it in the visible realm or in the realm of the unseen, which includes the past, the future, the ‘realm of spirits’ and various other spheres of existence pertaining to the various aspects of Divine knowledge and dominicality. To imagine that the ‘visible realm’ – the realm of which we are currently part – is the only realm in which life is manifest is to claim that the Divine name ‘Ever-Living’, which is by

146

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels definition pre-and post-eternal, is reflected only in this limited spatio-temporal segment of cosmic existence we call the external world of the here-and-now. For Nursi this is clearly unacceptable, limiting life to this brief sojourn on earth and restricting the reach of the Ever-Living One to this realm alone. Thus one broad aspect of the pillar of ‘belief in Divine Determining and Decree’ is understood through the mystery of life and is established by it. Just as the life and vitality of the Manifest World and existent, visible objects become apparent from their orderliness and the consequences of their existence, so too do past and future creatures regarded as belonging to the World of the Unseen - have an immaterial existence and a form of life and spiritual presence in God’s knowledge. The trace of this life and presence is made manifest and known by means of the ‘Tablet of Divine Decree and Determining’ and through all the stages and circumstances of their external lives and existences.32

To conclude this section, we have to say that, Nursi’s arguments notwithstanding, life does not provide cast-iron ‘proofs’ of any of the six ‘principles of belief ’ as they are exposited by the Quran. However, as he endeavours to show, it is not difficult to see that these principles are bound up inextricably with the mystery of life, in which case his assertion that it provides ‘indirect’ evidence of them would appear to be perfectly acceptable within its own understandably limited frames of reference.

Life and Divine unity

In his opening paragraph, Nursi described life as something which, when it enters a particular, transforms that particular into something universal. In the final section of his discourse on the Divine names ‘Ever-Living’ and ‘Giver of Life’ he returns to this theme and elaborates. Life possesses such extensiveness it is simply a comprehensive mirror of Divine Oneness, showing in itself most of the Divine Names manifested throughout the universe. When life enters a body, it makes it a small world, like a sort of seed of the tree of the universe, containing an index of it. In the same way that a seed can only be the work of a power capable of making the tree that bears it, the one who creates the tiniest living beings has to be the Creator of the whole universe. Thus, through this comprehensiveness, life demonstrates in itself a most obscure mystery of Divine Oneness. That is, like the mighty sun is present through its light, reflection and seven colours in every drop of water and fragment of glass facing it, so the Divine Names and attributes which encompass the universe are manifested together in all living beings. From this point of view, in regard to creation and dominicality, life makes the universe into an indivisible whole, a universal whose being broken into parts and in which others can share is outside the bounds of possibility.33

Here, Nursi characterises life as something which transforms, integrates and unifies. When life enters a thing, it turns that thing into a whole realm; if it enters part of something, it affords that part the comprehensiveness of a whole being in its own right; and if enters a particular, it bestows upon that particular the extensiveness of a universal. Life, then, facilitates the formation of beings into a vast, intricately crafted network of both concentric

147

The Qur’an Revealed  and intersecting circles, all of which are united and integrated while at the same time remaining unique and individuated, by means of the phenomenon of life. For example, that which renders a human heart viable is life, which also unites it to the rest of the body of which it is part: without life, the heart can neither function as an individuated organ nor enjoy a relationship with the rest of the body to which it must of necessity be connected. Life is also the medium through which all of the other Divine names are made manifest: indeed, without life, attributes such as knowledge, power, will, seeing, hearing and speaking would be unfathomable. In this sense, as Nursi says, life is analogous to light, for it may be said in one sense to contain all of the ‘colours’ of the Divine palette, demonstrating that their possessor is One. And in the same way that life shows that its Owner is also the source of the other essential attributes, it also shows that the creator of the part is the creator of the whole; the artist who fashioned the realm that is the eye must, thanks to the connection that the eye has with the rest of the body, be the creator of that body too. For Nursi, then, life helps man to understand not only Divine oneness (ah. adiyya) but also Divine unity (wāh. idiyya).34 Yes, the stamp on your face shows self-evidently that the One Who creates you is the One Who creates all human kind. For the nature of man’s creation is the same; it cannot be split up. Also, by means of life the parts of the universe are like the individual members of mankind, and the universe, like the species. It shows the seal of Divine Oneness and stamp of Eternal Besoughtedness on every individual the same as it shows them on the whole, thus in every way repulsing the associating of partners with God. Also, there are such extraordinarily wondrous miracles of dominical art in life that one thing is clear: unless one is able to create the whole universe, one will be unable to create even the tiniest of animate creatures, owing to the interconnection and unity between the part and the whole. Yes, a pen that inscribes in a tiny seed the index of the huge pine-tree, and the programme of its life, like writing the whole Quran in a chickpea, can surely be none other than the pen that writes the heavens together with the stars. And the one who places in the tiny head of a bee the ability and faculties to know the flowers in the garden of the universe, to be connected with most of its realms, to convey a gift of Divine mercy like honey, and to know on the day it comes into the world the conditions of life, can surely be none other than the Creator of the entire universe.35

In these passages, Nursi explains the concept of unity within multiplicity. Each human face is unique, he says, and points to the handicraft of one Artist and only one. But despite the individual uniqueness that each of them possesses, all human faces are made up of the same components, thus indicating that the Artist responsible for one face is the Artist responsible for all faces. Similarly, Nursi argues, whatever is responsible for the creation of, say, a single honey bee must surely be responsible for the creation of the whole species. Moreover, thanks to the phenomenon of life, and the interconnectedness and holism evident in the workings of the cosmos, the creator of the bee must also be the one who creates the flower from which the bee takes its nectar – the same creator who is responsible for all bees and all flowers, and, by extension, the whole cosmos of which bees and flowers are component and mutually dependent parts. It is life, Nursi argues, which connects each part of the vast whole that is

148

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels the cosmos to all other parts, just as it connects one member of the human body to all of its other members. And so life is a shining seal of Divine Unity on the face of the universe; and in respect of life all beings endowed with spirits are stamps of Divine Oneness; and the embroideries and art in every living being form a seal of Eternal Besoughtedness; and living creatures set their signatures with their lives on the missive of the universe in the name of the EverLiving and Self-Subsistent One to their number, and are seals of Divine Unity, stamps of Divine Oneness and signets of Divine Eternal Besoughtedness. Similarly, just as all living beings are seals of Divine Unity in this book of the universe, like life, so too a seal of Divine Oneness has been placed of the faces and features of each.36

Without life, this interconnectedness and mutual dependence would not be possible. And without life, it would be impossible to discern the single hand that is responsible for the handicraft of all things, displaying unity within multiplicity. Life ensures not only that each created being points to a single Source for its existence but also that all created beings are dependent for their existence on that selfsame Source. Just as life makes evident the fact that only One is responsible for all, it also makes evident the fact that all are dependent on, and seek only, the One. Furthermore, just as life forms signatures and seals testifying to the Unity of the EverLiving and Self-Subsistent One to the number of its particulars and of animate beings, the act of raising and restoring to life also sets signatures to Divine Unity to the number of beings. For example, the raising to life of the earth, which is a single individual, testifies to Divine Unity as brilliantly as the sun. For in the raising to life of the earth in spring, hundreds of thousands of species and their innumerable individual members are restored to life one within the other, without fault or defect, in perfect, regular order. The one who performs a single act such as that together with innumerable other orderly acts must surely be the Creator of all beings and the Ever-Living and SelfSubsistent One, and the Single One of Unity any partnership in Whose dominicality is impossible.37

Finally, Nursi invokes the power to raise and restore to life that is witnessed every spring as evidence to support his contention that the source of this power is a Single Source. The one who ‘raises from the dead’ the leafless cherry tree in the spring and bedecks it with thousands of blossom petals and countless bunches of new fruits must, Nursi argues, be the same one who restores to life all cherry trees in the spring, as well as all other species of plant and animal life. Here, of course, Nursi is alluding to the ‘supreme resurrection’, his line of reasoning being that the one who revives the apparently dead earth each spring is the one who will revive all beings and reassemble them on the plain of resurrection after the demise of the earth and all human life at the end of time. All of the characteristics of life thus far described, says Nursi, show the awesomeness of the Divine names ‘Ever-Living’ and ‘Giver of Life’, both of which are for him among the greatest names predicable of God. Given this, he says, the reader should understand how repugnant it is when the ‘Ever-Living’ One is denied, and when the ignorant and the ungrateful say that the purpose of life is merely to seek constant self-gratification, thus

149

The Qur’an Revealed  degrading the bounties of life, consciousness and reason and denigrating the very purpose of creation itself.

Spirit (rūh. )

The Quranic verse “Say: ‘The spirit is from the command of my Lord, and of knowledge you have been given but little.’ ” 38 has tended to colour the approach of scholars towards the question of the spirit, implying either that it cannot be understood at all – as some authors have maintained – or that even if any knowledge can be had of it, that knowledge will by default be extremely limited. As a result, discussion of the nature and function of the human faculty known as the rūh.  in traditional theological circles has tended to be limited by a general reluctance to engage to any meaningful degree with a subject that is theoretically unfathomable, or, if it has taken place, has been circumscribed by an unwillingness to push boundaries. That the word rūh.  appears to have been used multivalently in the Quran renders any attempt to grasp an already elusive subject more difficult still. The word is used to denote that which was ‘breathed’ into the fashioned clay of Adam in order to animate him and render him human and deserving of the prostration of angels;39 it is used to describe the vehicle which carries Divine inspiration to those of God’s servants who are deemed suitable to receive it;40 and it is also used with al-quds to form the term ‘holy spirit’ (rūh.  al-quds) and with al-amīn to form the ‘trustworthy spirit’, both of which are interpreted traditionally as referring to the angel Gabriel.41 The situation is exacerbated further by the fact that many classical scholars used the words rūh.  and nafs (soul) interchangeably, even though it is quite clear from the Quran - and, indeed, from the Risale - that spirit and soul, while closely linked, are ontologically different entities altogether.42 One of the results of this confusion is that much of the theological material on the spirit concerns itself not with the definition of spirit but rather with what are perceived to be its attributes. These attributes allow us to understand something about the relationship – in the case of man, in particular – between the spirit and the body into which it is ‘blown’. The spirit is said to be a force which ‘governs’ (tadbīr) the body in the sense of actually giving it life: matter is dead matter without the spirit – the ‘breath of the Merciful’ – to animate or ‘inspirit’ it.43 Life, which is linked inextricably to spirit, finds its most perfect fruit, according to Nursi, in man himself, and from this one can perhaps understand why Muslims mystics such as Ghazālī, Najm al-Din Rāzī, Nasafī and Ibn al-‘Arabī, focusing on the Quranic ascription of the human spirit to God, concluded that the human spirit is perhaps the most elevated of all God’s creations. Further evidence to support the notion that the human spirit is at the apex of the creational hierarchy comes from the creation myth itself. What is interesting about the verses concerning the creation of man is that God’s exhortation to the angels that they should prostrate in acknowledgement of man’s potential superiority comes directly after the inert clay of Adam is infused with God’s spirit. The superiority of the human spirit over the spirits of other living beings such as angels, jinn and animals is not quantitative: human beings do not have ‘more’ spirit than others. What distinguishes human spirit from the spirits of other beings, and caused angels to prostate before it, is its proximity to God, coming as it does from the ‘world of command’

150

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels (‘ālam al-amr) and connecting that face of man which looks to the visible world with the realm of the unseen. The human spirit, then, is that part of the human being which has its roots in the supra-material soil of the invisible realm, and around whose immaterial trunk and branches the material reality of the body is shaped. Insofar as it is individuated – that is to say, insofar as a spirit can be said to be a human spirit, such as the spirit of John or Ali – it is from one perspective ‘created’; insofar as it is the pure reflection of life itself, together with all the other attributes of God, it is from another perspective ‘uncreated’. Given that it is ‘breathed’ into man, who did not possess it before, it cannot be described in its individuated form as pre-eternal (qadīm). But it is held to be everlasting (bāqī) – a prerequisite of man’s own post-eternality (abadiyya). Most of the material in the Risale which deals with the human spirit focuses on its everlastingness rather than its precise nature and function. Nursi’s discussion of the immortality of the human soul begins with appeals to authority and religious experience: Man’s spirit is definitely immortal. Almost all the indications which point to the existence of the angels and spirit beings also point to the immortality of man’s spirit. In my opinion, the matter is so certain that further explanation would be profitless. Indeed, the distance between us and the caravans of innumerable immortal spirits who are waiting to go to the hereafter in the Intermediate and Spirit Worlds is so fine and slight that there is no need to demonstrate it with proofs. Numberless saints and people of illumination getting in touch with them, and those who discern the secrets of the grave seeing them, and even a number of ordinary people communicating with them, and the mass of people forming relations with them in true dreams, have formed a mass of unanimous reports, and quite simply become part of the commonly accepted knowledge of mankind. However, because materialist thought has stupefied everyone in this age, it has been able to implant doubts in their minds concerning even the most evident matters.44

Regardless of whether or not ‘materialist thought’ implants doubts in people’s minds concerning the immortality of the human spirit, there is no denying that even for the honest sceptic, religious experience is problematic because it is lacks intersubjective verifiability. Nursi’s assertion that the immortality of the spirit is so obvious that ‘there is no need to demonstrate it with proofs’ is clearly intended for the consumption of believers, whose possible doubts concerning the matter may be allayed by the knowledge that those whom they trust – the prophets, saints and gnostics – have had personal experience of the spirit world. Nursi’s line of reasoning then turns to a theme which runs like a leitmotif throughout the Risale, particularly in those sections of the work which focus on ‘proofs’ of the hereafter: the theme of eternal divine beauty and the requirement that there be eternal ‘mirrors’ in which that beauty is made manifest. As is proved in the treatise on resurrection and the hereafter, an eternal, everlasting and peerless beauty requires the eternity and permanence of mirror-bearing enraptured admirers. And a faultless, eternal and perfect art seeks the perpetuation of thoughtful heralds. And a boundless mercy and beneficence require the continued ease and happiness of needy ones to thank it. And the foremost of those mirror-bearing enraptured admirers, those heralding thoughtful ones, those needy thankful ones is the human spirit, in which

151

The Qur’an Revealed  case it will accompany that beauty, that perfection, that mercy on the endless road to eternity; it will be immortal.45

The absolute nature of the Divine names and the eternality of their manifestation require everlasting ‘mirrors’ to be held up to them, in order that they may be admired. The most elevated of these mirrors is man, whose perception of the names is facilitated by his spirit. That spirit must, then, endure for as long as there are names and attributes for it to acknowledge and reflect. However, Nursi sees all entities, whatever their existential degree or rung on the creational ladder, as being created ultimately for eternal life: As is also proved in the treatise on resurrection, not only the human spirit but also the simplest levels of existence have not been created for extinction; they manifest a form of immortality. Even an insignificant flower, which has no spirit, when it ceases from external existence manifests a sort of immortality in a thousand ways. For its form is made permanent in countless memories. And finding perpetuation in all its hundreds of seeds, the law according to which it was formed continues. Now the flower’s law of formation, the model of its form, which resembles a tiny fragment of spirit, is made permanent by an All-Wise Preserver, and it is preserved throughout turbulent transformations with perfect order in its tiny seeds and made permanent. Given this, if you do not understand the degree to which the human spirit, which is of an extremely comprehensive and elevated nature, and has been clothed with external existence, and is a conscious, living and luminous commanding law, most certainly manifests immortality, and is tied and bound to eternity, if you do not understand this, how can you claim to be a conscious human being? The All-Wise One of Glory is an Imperishable Preserver Who includes and pre­serves the programme and law of formation of a mighty tree in its tiny dot-like seed – a law which to some degree resembles a spirit. Given this, is it reasonable to ask how such a Creator can preserve the spirits of the dead? 46

Here, Nursi maintains that while simpler forms of existence such as flowers are not endowed with spirit – at least not in the way that man is – they are distinguished by the divine law which gives them existence in a form that is unique to them. That divine law, which Nursi implies is tantamount to a ‘fragment of spirit’, ensures that the flower as a universal entity lives on. Each flower endures through the flower which follows it, thanks to the law upon which its creation is based, and the flower and what it symbolises lives on in human memory, even in the world to come. The law which gives the flower its form is permanent, even though flowers themselves disappear from view. Given, then, that the law or spirit which gives the flower its form is everlasting, is it not reasonable to suppose, Nursi asks, that the law or spirit which underpins human existence should not also be everlasting? Man’s spirit, which has been clothed in a living, conscious, luminous external existence, is a comprehensive and veracious commanding law disposed to acquiring universality. And even the weakest commanding laws manifest stability and permanence. For if it is considered carefully, it will be seen that present in all species which are subject to change is a constant truth which, revolving within the changes, transformations and stages of life, causes the outer forms of things to change and, living and not dying, is permanent.47

152

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels If anyone doubts this, Nursi says, he only has to study his own life in order to perceive the immortality of the spirit: For in the course of occupying its body for a number of years the spirit causes the body to change considerably, yet the spirit self-evidently remains constant. In which case, although the body is ephemeral, it does not affect the spirit’s permanence, nor spoil its nature, even though the spirit is completely naked at death. However, in the course of life, the spirit gradually changes its body-clothes, and at the time of death it is suddenly undressed. It has been established through certain conjecture, indeed, through observation, that the body subsists though the spirit; the spirit does not subsist through the body. Rather, since the spirit subsists and is dominant of itself, the body may be dispersed and gathered together again as it wishes; it will not infringe the spirit’s independence. In fact, the body is the spirit’s house, it is its home; it is not its clothes. What clothes the spirit is a subtle, fine sheath, something which may be likened to a body, which is to some extent constant, and is ethereal and appropriate for the spirit. At the time of death, then, the spirit is not completely naked: it leaves its home dressed in its body-like sheath.48

That man’s physicality is in constant flux while his spirit or sense of ‘I-ness’ does not appear to change is evidence enough for Nursi that the body is dependent on the spirit and not the other way round, even though the body is in a sense the spirit’s corporeal receptacle. What has primacy, Nursi says, is the spirit, which endures unchanged and unscathed through all of the revolutions which occur to the matter from which man is created during his lifespan on earth. For the spirit is not subject to destruction and dissolution. This is because it is simple and uncompounded; it has unity. As for destruction, dissolution and decomposition, they are the function of complex and compound substances. The mortality of man’s spirit would be either through destruction and dissolution, whereas unity provides no opportunity for these, and its simple nature disallows decomposition; or it would be through annihilation. But the limitless compassion of the Absolutely Generous One would not permit annihilation, and His boundless munificence would not allow that He should take back from the human spirit the bounty of existence which He has bestowed on it, which it ardently desires, and of which it is worthy.49

The Quran declares that man can have but little knowledge of the nature of the spirit, and it is perhaps at this juncture in Nursi’s discourse that the significance of this assertion becomes clear. The immortality of the spirit derives from the fact that, unlike the corporeal shell of the body, it is not subject to decay and annihilation. It does not perish, Nursi says, because of its essential simplicity (basāt. a). The spirit is held to come directly from the ‘world of Divine command’ (‘ālam al-amr) and is not a composite entity. In other words, while it is still created, unlike the body which acts as its corporeal receptacle, it is not composed of quantitative parts and is not a compound of matter and form, existence and quiddity, essence and accidents, and so on. The spirit belongs to the category of entities known as mujarradat, or beings that are ‘disengaged’ (mujarrad) from matter, the provenance of which is the unseen realm or ‘world of dominion’ (‘ālam al-malakūt). Now to say that there are beings in existence which are completely immaterial is perhaps a little misleading. The class of entities known as malā’ika or angels is said to

153

The Qur’an Revealed  be created out of light, and while light is not material in the way that the human body is material, it is not immaterial in the way that God is immaterial either.50 Indeed, if the Quran is correct and there is, indeed, nothing whatsoever like unto Him,51 then the mujarradāt may be disengaged from the kind of matter that we encounter in the visible world or ‘world of the kingdom’ (‘ālam al-mulk), but they cannot be disengaged from matter entirely. To describe them as beings that are ‘relatively material’, or, perhaps ‘immaterially material’, is possibly as near as we can get to the reality of their creational make-up, although those descriptions are clearly far from ideal. What is important here is that we understand what Nursi is saying when he talks in terms of ‘simplicity’, and why ‘simple’ beings, such as spirits and angels, are non-composite beings, and thus immune from decay, dissolution and annihilation. Nursi elaborates by re-visiting the notion of the spirit as ‘law’: Just as the unconscious laws which proceed from the Divine attribute of will and the ‘world of the divine command’ are always, or mostly, enduring, so is it even more definite that the spirit, which is a sort of brother to them, and like them is a manifestation of the attribute of will and comes from the ‘world of the command’, manifests immortality. It is also more worthy of it, because it is existent, it has an external reality. And it is more potent, more elevated, because it possesses consciousness. It is also more enduring than them, and more valuable, because it is living.52

From the Nursian perspective, then, spirit is a ‘luminous law’ that has both external existence and consciousness. Spirit is the brother, the companion, of intelligent law. Like fixed and natural laws, spirit comes from the world of the Divine command and the attribute of will. Power clothes it in a being decked out with senses, attaches consciousness to its head, makes a subtle inner faculty the shell for that pearl. If the Creator’s power were to clothe the laws of species in external existence, each would become a spirit; if it were to remove the spirit from the being and take the intelligence from its head, it would again become an undying law.53

In the last analysis, then, spirit is an embodiment of the creational law which issues from the Divine will, and the driving force behind all living beings in general, and man in particular, during their existence in the phenomenal world.

Do all beings have spirits?

With regard to the question of whether spirit is something which man alone possesses there is no definitive answer to be found in the Risale-i Nur. In one passage, in which he discusses the fixity of the levels of phenomenal existence and the inability of beings on each level to ‘complain’ that they do not occupy a higher rung on the ladder of being, he declares that mineral and plant entities, unlike animals and humans, lack spirit: In order to display the perfections of His art through the embroideries of His names, the All-Glorious Maker takes the essential nature of beings as a model, then He clothes them all and especially living creatures in the garment of a body bejewelled with senses, and inscribes it with the pen of divine decree and determining, thus displaying the

154

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels manifestation of His names. In addition, He gives to each one of them a perfection, a pleasure, an effulgence, in a way suitable to it and as a wage. Does anything have the right, then, to say to the All-Glorious Maker, who exemplifies the meaning of the Lord of All Dominion has free disposal over His realms as He wishes: “You are giving me trouble and disturbing me.”? God forbid! Beings have no rights before the Necessarily Existent One, nor can they claim them. What falls to them is, by offering thanks and praise, to carry out what is required by the degree of existence He has given them. For the degrees of existence that are given are occurrences, and each requires a cause. Degrees that are not given are possibilities, and possibilities are non-existent as well as being infinite. As for instances of non-existence, they do not require a cause. For example, minerals cannot say: “Why weren’t we plants?” They cannot complain. What falls to them is to offer thanks to their Creator for having been given mineral existence. And plants may not complain asking why they were not animals; what is due to them is to offer thanks, for they have received life as well as existence. As for animals, they cannot complain that they are not humans; what is incumbent on them, since they have been given the precious substance of spirit in addition to life and existence, is to offer thanks.54

Earlier, however, we saw that the phenomenon of life (h. ayāt) itself was described by Nursi as a “most wondrous being endowed with spirit (dhirūh. )”. Now if plants are classed as animate beings, the fact that they are imbued with life also suggests that they are imbued with spirit. Indeed, spirit is the most common term used by classical scholars of Muslim mysticism for the direct manifestation of Divine unity (wah. da) on the level of the created realm, with entities differing among themselves in accordance with the degree to which they reflect the attributes of the spirit, among which are said to include luminosity, intelligence, desire, power and the rest of the Divine attributes, most notably life itself.55 Logically, then, since there is presumably nothing in the created realm which does not manifest the Divine names to some degree, the reach of spirit and life must extend to all things, including inanimate beings. This is further evidenced, as we shall see shortly, by the fact that in all created entities there is an angelic presence which, by its very nature, manifests spirit and life. It is thus possible, one may argue, to talk of gradations or, perhaps, more accurately, different ‘forms’ of life and spirit, with each class of created entities possessing the form that is most in keeping with its particular rung on the creational ‘ladder’. A rock, then, may be seen as a being that has both life and spirit, but in a form which is consonant with its apparently inanimate status. Similarly, a flower is also alive, and may also be said to possess spirit, but in a form that is appropriate to its position in the creational schema. Indeed, if all beings are manifestations of the Divine names, they must all of necessity possess existence, life and spirit of some kind. Furthermore, although the kinds of existence, life and spirit differ according to the places that entities occupy in the so-called hierarchy of being, they are arguably in fact a single existence, a single life and a single spirit. As for Nursi’s assertion regarding minerals and plants, it is perfectly reasonable to presume that by ‘spirit’ he was referring to the kind of individuated spirit possessed by man, which no other creature in the cosmos possesses, and on account of which the angels were commanded to prostrate before Adam when it was blown into him during his original creation.

155

The Qur’an Revealed 

Angels (malā’ika)

Belief in the existence of beings known as angels is common to most of the world’s religions, but only in Islam has it been accorded the status of ‘article of faith’, second only, some would claim, to belief in God. Despite the integral role that angels play in Quranic cosmology, medieval Muslim theologians had very little to say on the subject, while modern scholars – with a few notable exceptions – tend either to avoid it completely or to explain it away in somewhat apologetic terms, as though the Quranic description of angels really is of questionable relevance to a modern, highly politicised and science-friendly religion such as Islam. It is not difficult to understand why some might think that the subject of angels is a rather difficult one with which to engage on an intellectual level. While historically the portrayal of angels as corporeal beings with recognisably human attributes is largely a JudaeoChristian construct, the way angels have been understood in Muslim theological tradition and, indeed, by the Quran itself, is not that far removed from the approach of other monotheistic religions. Unfortunately, artistic imagination has tended to anthropomorphise angels to the extent that their true essential natures have been almost airbrushed out completely, as the bare-bottomed cherubs which adorn countless Baroque paintings attest. The reduction of what are basically spiritual entities and denizens of the ‘unseen realm’ to winged babies with beatific smiles or statuesque paragons of beauty with radiant halos has tended to exacerbate the fact that angelology is a problematic field of enquiry, even for believers. Nursi’s treatment of angels attempts, as we shall see, to rationalise the existence of angels in a way which lifts what is essentially a non-rational subject out of the realm of the fantastical and repositions it in the realm of the reasonable. But before we explore his angelology, we should see how the subject is approached by the Quran.

Angels in the Quran

The word malak (angel, pl. malā’ika) is derived from the triliteral root m-l-k, which occurs over 200 times in the Quran in ten derived forms. Among these derivatives are the verbal nouns malik (king or sovereign), mālik (owner or possessor), mulk (kingdom) and malakūt (dominion). Angels are, as the cognates malakūt and mulk suggest, connected with both the unseen realm and the visible realm. The Quran describes them in one verse as ‘messengers’ that bring, among other things, revelation and inspiration from behind the veil of the unseen to the seen world.56 As entities who originate in the unseen realm, angels are considered to be among the mujarradāt, or those beings that are ‘disengaged’ from matter, although they are understood traditionally to have been created from light.57 When angels bring their ‘messages’ from the unseen to the seen realm, however, they are said to take on forms that can be grasped by those to whom the ‘messages’ are addressed. The angle Gabriel, for example, was said on some occasions to have appeared to Muhammad in human form.58 The angels are depicted by the Quran as being perfectly obedient servants of God, each angel having its own ‘known station’.59 Angels are described as being arranged ‘in ranks’, which suggests a kind of hierarchy, with different individual angels or groups of

156

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels angels tasked with different duties, such as recording the deeds of men or taking their souls at death.60 Angels are seen as unswerving executors of the Divine will, carrying out His commands to the letter; they are also described as ‘bearers of the Divine Throne’, which is understood traditionally to symbolise Divine power.61 Their centrality to Islamic cosmology is such that, after belief in the unity of God, belief in angels is second in the list of the six ‘articles of faith’ by the Quran.62 Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that those narratives in the Quran which deal with the creation of mankind, the descent of revelation, the administration of cosmic phenomena and the concept of resurrection and the hereafter cannot be understood without reference to the existence of angels. Nursi’s discourse on angels goes some way to explaining exactly why this should be.

Nursian angelology

Nursi’s treatment of angels consists of his attempt to provide a rationale for their existence together with a description of their functions and the role that they play in the cosmic scheme. He devotes little time to describing them or outlining their hierarchies, although these things are indicated or alluded to on occasion. According to Nursi, both reality and wisdom require that, like the earth, the whole of the rest of the cosmos be populated by conscious entities, with forms of existence suited to their different cosmic environments. Such entities are, in the language of the Quran, known as angels (malā‘ika) and spirit beings (rūh. āniyāt), and their existence, Nursi says, is as definite as that of humans and animals.63 Reality requires it to be thus. For despite the earth’s smallness and insignificance in relation to the heavens, its being filled with intelligent beings and from time to time being emptied and then refilled with new ones suggests that the heavens too, with their majestic constellations like adorned palaces, are filled with animate creatures, the light of the light of existence, and conscious and intelligent creatures, the light of animate creatures. Like man and the jinn, those creatures are spectators of the palace of the world, deliberators upon the book of the universe and heralds of this realm of dominicality.64

From the existence of conscious beings on the globe of the earth, Nursi infers that the heavens too – space and the whole panoply of celestial bodies which fill it – must also be populated by animate entities with consciousness. Standing alone, this extrapolation appears less than convincing. However, when Nursi’s argument becomes properly theological, and he outlines the reason why the ‘book of the universe’ was written, the case he presents for a cosmos filled with living beings endowed with consciousness and the powers of intellection becomes more tenable. According to the ‘hidden treasure’ Tradition, the whole of the cosmos is created in order that its Creator be known, loved and worshipped. The ‘book of the cosmos’ was written in order to be deliberated upon, so that its writer might be acknowledged and his artistry admired. Acknowledgment and admiration require consciousness and intellection, and since every sentence, word and letter of the ‘cosmic book’ is there to be read, understood, pondered and assimilated, it follows on that there can be nowhere in the cosmos that is devoid of beings who are able to interpret this ‘book’ and bow down in awe at the majesty of its author’s writing. Nursi elaborates:

157

The Qur’an Revealed  The nature of the universe surely points to their existence. For since it is embellished and decked out with uncountable numbers of finely adorned works of art and meaningful decorations and wise embroideries, it self-evidently requires the gazes of thoughtful admirers and wondering, appreciative lovers; it demands their existence. Yes, just as beauty requires a lover, so too is food given to the hungry. Thus the sustenance of spirits and nourishment of hearts in this boundless beauty of art looks to the angels and spirit beings; it points to them. For while this infinite adornment requires an infinite duty of contemplation and worship, man and jinn can perform only an infinitesimally small part of that infinite duty, that wise supervision, that extensive worship. This means that boundless varieties of angels and spirit beings are necessary to perform those duties, and to fill and inhabit the mighty mosque of the world with their ranks.65

The existence of conscious beings throughout the cosmos is thus in a sense ‘demanded’ by the nature of cosmos itself, which, as a gallery displaying countless works of art brought into being by its owner, must of necessity be acknowledged and appreciated by those who are able to admire them. Since the spatiotemporal reach of human beings and jinn is limited, and the field of contemplation and adoration unbounded, it follows that there must be a limitless number of other conscious entities in the cosmos who are created in order to permeate the whole of the cosmos with worship. The duty of these beings – angels in particular – is thus conscious worship, pure and simple, and they are deemed to be truly ubiquitous. Indeed, angels are present in every aspect, in every sphere of the universe, each charged with a duty of worship. It may be said according to both the narrations of hadiths and the wisdom in the order of the world that from lifeless planets and stars to raindrops, all are ships or vehicles for a kind of angel. The angels mount these vehicles with Divine permission and travel observing the Manifest World; they represent their praise and glorification.66

Nursi makes it clear in this passage that there is not a realm, sphere or aspect of the cosmos which is devoid of angelic presence: angels are, quite literally, everywhere, tasked solely with the duty of worship. What this means in practice, we will discuss shortly. Suffice here to say that according to Nursi, all created entities are ‘vehicles’ for one kind of angel or another, and have one ‘face’ turned towards the visible world. In other words, as we shall see, angels in a sense connect the unseen realm to the visible realm, where they ‘represent’ – or, more correctly, ‘re-present’ – the praise and glorification of entities, particularly those which are inanimate. The notion of a conscious being – the angel – representing a presumably nonconscious or inanimate being is an important part of Nursian angelology, as we shall see later.

Life demands the existence of angels

Having posited that the creation of angels is in necessitated by the very creation of the cosmos itself, Nursi now revisits the phenomenon of life and argues that it, too, demands the existence of angels. The perfection of existence is through life. Rather, the true existence of existence is through life. Life is the light of existence, and consciousness is the light of life. Life is the

158

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels summit and foundation of everything. Life appropriates everything for living beings; it is as though it makes one thing the owner of everything. Through life, a living thing may say: “All these things belong to me. The world is my house. The universe is my property, given to me by my owner.” Just as light is the cause of things being seen and, according to some, of the existence of colours, so is life the revealer of beings: it is the cause of their qualities being realized. Furthermore, it makes an insignificant particular general and universal, and is the cause of universal things being concentrated in a particular. It is also the cause of all the perfections of existence, by, for example, making innumerable things co-operate and unite, and making them the means of unity and being endowed with spirit. Life is even a sort of manifestation of Divine unity in the levels of multiplicity, and a mirror reflecting Divine oneness.67

Broadly speaking, Nursi describes life in terms of the Aristotelian ascending hierarchy of being, moving from the lowest forms of existence – the inanimate objects – and up through the plant and animal worlds, culminating in man. Consider the following: a lifeless object, even if it is a great mountain, is an orphan, a stranger, alone. Its only relations are with the place in which it is situated, and with the things which encounter it. Whatever else there is in the cosmos, it does not exist for the mountain. For the mountain has neither life through which it might be related to life, nor consciousness by which it might be concerned.68

Inanimate objects such as the mountain form the most basic level of existence, lacking both life and consciousness. While Nursi says that it does have relations with whatever happens to encounter it, in lacking life and consciousness, an inanimate object such as a mountain can neither engage actively with other living beings nor enjoy any awareness of the rest of the cosmos of which it is part. Compare this, he says, with a living creature such as the bee: The instant life enters the bee, it establishes such a connection with the universe that it is as though it concludes a trading agreement with it, especially with the flowers and plants of the earth. It can say: “The earth is my garden; it is my trading house.” Thus through the unconscious instinctive senses which impel and stimulate it, in addition to the wellknown five external senses and inner senses of animate beings, the bee has a feeling for, and a familiarity and reciprocal relationship with, most of the species in the world, and they are at its disposal.69

If life connects the humble bee to most of the other animate creatures across the face of the globe, in man – the pinnacle of creation – its nature is so refined that it connects him to the whole of the cosmos, with regard to both its inner and outer faces (mulk wa malakūt) If life then displays its effect thus in the tiniest of animate beings, certainly when it rises to the highest level, that of man, it will be revealed and extended and illumined to such a degree that just as a human being is able to move through the rooms of his house with his consciousness and mind, which are the light of life, so he may travel through the higher and the spiritual and corporeal worlds with them. That is to say, just as that conscious

159

The Qur’an Revealed  and animate being may go in spirit as though as a guest to those worlds, those worlds too come as guests to his mirror-like spirit by being reflected and depicted there.70

Life, then, enables man to move not only in a physical sense but also in a spiritual one, allowing him to embrace realms and dimensions of being that cannot be accessed by less sophisticated and spiritually capable beings. The difference between human life and that of plants and animals is that in man, life is a force which makes him by default a locus of manifestation for all of God’s Names and allows him, should he so wish, to display those names consciously and in a spirit of worshipfulness. As far as animate beings on earth are concerned, then, existence, life and consciousness find their most subtle expression in what Nursi often describes as God’s choicest creation, the human being. Given that existence without life is not really existence, Nursi says, and that life without consciousness is not really life, one may conclude that if other worlds exist, their existence too must be real existence, with real life and real consciousness: In short it may be said that if there were no life, existence would not be existence; it would be no different from non-existence. Life is the light of the spirit, and consciousness is the light of life. Since life and consciousness are important to this great extent; and since there is self-evidently an absolutely perfect order in the universe, and a masterly precision and most wise harmony; and since our lowly, wretched globe, our wandering earth has been filled with uncountable numbers of animate beings, intelligent beings and beings with spirits - it may be concluded with decisive certainty that those heavenly palaces, those lofty constellations also have animate and conscious inhabitants appropriate to them.71

Moreover, Nursi argues, if Divine power can create beings with spirits – man, for instance – from the basest of materials such as earth, why should He not make use of more subtle matter, such as light, to fashion spiritual entities appropriate to the supra-mundane realms? Moreover since, as is plain to see, pre-eternal power creates innumerable animate beings and beings with spirits from the most common substances and densest matter, and, giving it great importance, transmutes dense matter by means of life into a subtle substance; and since it strews the light of life everywhere in great abundance, and gilds most things with the light of consciousness; with such flawless power and faultless wisdom, the All-Wise and All-Powerful One would certainly not neglect the other floods of subtle matter such as light, which is close to and fitting for the spirit; He would not leave them without life, without consciousness, inanimate. Indeed, He creates animate and conscious beings in great numbers from light, which is also matter, and even from meanings, air and even words. Just as He creates numerous different species of animals, so from these torrents of subtle matter He creates numerous different creatures.72

There is no form of matter, then, Nursi tells us, which cannot be used by Divine power as a substrate for the creation of entities. Light, which is itself a form of matter possibly closer than any other to the purely immaterial, is, according to Muslim tradition, the substrate for the creation of angels. To demonstrate how self-evident and rational he believes it is to accept the existence of angels, and how irrational it is to disbelieve in them, Nursi allegorizes.

160

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels There were two men, an uncouth villager and an intelligent city dweller, who made friends and travelled to Istanbul. In a distant corner of that civilized and magnificent city they came across a dirty, wretched little building, a factory. They looked and saw that the strange factory was full of miserable, impoverished men working. All around the building were various other animate beings and beings with spirits, but their means of livelihood and conditions of life were such that some were herbivorous, living only on plants, while others were piscivorous, eating nothing but fish. The two men then looked into the distance, where they saw thousands of adorned palaces and lofty castles. Among the palaces were spacious workshops and broad squares. Because of either the distance or defects in the men’s eyesight, or because the inhabitants of those palaces had hidden themselves, those inhabitants were not visible to the two men. Moreover, the terrible conditions which the men had witnessed in the wretched little factory were not to be seen in the palaces. Consequently, the uncouth villager, who had never before seen a city, declared: “Those palaces have no inhabitants: they are empty, and completely devoid of animate beings or entities with spirits.” To this garbled nonsense the second man replied: “O you miserable man! This insignificant little building you see here has been filled with beings endowed with spirits, with workers, and there is someone who continually employs and replaces them. Look, there is not an empty space all around this factory, it has been filled with animate beings and beings with spirits. Do you think it is at all possible that there would be no highranking and suitable inhabitants in that orderly city, in those wisely adorned palaces so full of art which we can see in the distance? Of course they are occupied, and the different conditions of life there are appropriate for those who live there. In place of grass they eat pastries, and in place of fish, cakes. Their not being visible to you because of the distance, or your weak eyesight, or their hiding themselves, does not mean that they are not actually there. The fact that a thing is not seen is no indication of its nonexistence.” 73

The ‘wretched little building’ in the allegory is the globe of the earth, while the palaces and castles of Istanbul are the celestial bodies and supra-mundane realms of the cosmos. Now if a ‘wretched little building’ like the earth, which is just one out of an unfathomably large number of realms in existence, is home to beings endowed with life, consciousness and spirit, it makes absolute good sense, Nursi argues, that the vast celestial realms outwith the earth should be full of entities possessing life, consciousness and spirit. Nursi makes it clear, however, that their form will be appropriate to their creational location: For there are different kinds of angels, just as there are different kinds of corporeal beings. Indeed, the angel who is appointed to a raindrop will not be of the same sort as the angel appointed to the sun.74

But Nursi’s point in this section is not merely to affirm the existence of conscious beings – angels in particular – in those vast celestial reaches which lie beyond the globe of the earth. The visible world (‘ālam al-mulk) includes the sub-atomic as well as the galactic, and so according to Nursi’s argument, those realms of the material world which are inaccessible to the unaided human senses – the atoms in the human eye, for example – must be as filled with conscious, living entities as their vaster celestial counterparts. In short, wherever there

161

The Qur’an Revealed  is existence, on whatever scale, there is life. And wherever there is life, there are living, conscious entities capable of appreciating the vitality of existence in all of its forms. Nursi concludes the section by affirming the primacy of existence – and, by extension, life – over matter, thus paving the way for his assertion that even in those realms which are supra-material, such as the world of the unseen, life is still ubiquitous. As may be established empirically, matter is not essential so that existence may be made subject to it, and be dependent on it. Rather, matter subsists through a meaning, and that meaning is life, it is spirit. Also, as may be established through observation, matter is not the thing served so that everything may be ascribed to it. It is rather the servant; it renders service to the process of the perfection of a truth. And that truth is life. And the fundament of that truth is spirit. Also, as is self-evident, matter is not dominant so that recourse may be made to it or perfections sought from it. Rather, it is dominated; it looks to the decree of some foundation and is in motion in the way that that decree dictates. And that foundation is life, it is spirit, it is consciousness. Also, as is necessary, matter is not the kernel, it is not the foundation, it is not a settled abode so that events and perfections may be affixed to it or constructed on it. Rather, it is a shell prepared to be split, rent, dissolved; it is a husk, it is froth, it is a form.75

In stressing that it is life, together with spirit and consciousness, which has ontological primacy over matter, Nursi is conducting an argument that is analogous, and indeed not unconnected, to the one put forward by Mullā S. adrā for the primacy (as.āla) of existence (wujūd) over quiddity (māhiyya).76 According to S. adrā, the existence of a thing precedes its essence and is thus foundational, since entities have to exist first before they can have an essence or quiddity. Essences or quiddities are determined and variable according to their existential ‘intensity’, as we saw in our brief digression into S. adrā’s notion of ‘gradation of existence’ (tashkīk al-wujūd) in Chapter Two. Entities are, therefore, nothing more than ‘forms’ of existence. While no claims are made here which would place Nursi in the same transcendental existentialist camp as S. adrā, there are commonalities between the former’s approach to life and the latter’s approach to existence that are undeniable. For Nursi, it is not matter which is foundational (‘as.l) that life should be a property of it; rather, it is life through which matter subsists. Matter is not only something which moves and behaves in accordance with the ‘decree’ issued by life, Nursi says, but it is also nothing more than a ‘form’ (s.ūra). And although Nursi does not spell out explicitly exactly what it is that gives rise to this ‘form’, from the context one may conclude that the source of matter is life itself, in exactly the same way that for S. adrā, entities are nothing more than different forms of existence (wujūd). Nursi then goes on to explain the correlation between life and matter in slightly greater detail. Consider the following: a creature so minute it can only be seen with a microscope has such acute senses that it can hear its friend’s voice and see its sustenance; it has extremely sensitive and sharp senses. This demonstrates that the effects of life increase and the light of the spirit intensifies in proportion to the reducing and refining of matter. It is as though the more matter is refined and the more we become distanced from our material

162

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels existences, the closer we draw to the world of the spirit, the world of life and the world of consciousness; and the more intensely the heat of the spirit and the light of life are manifested.77

That life and matter are thus linked inextricably is clear, although the correlation between them is at first glance different conceptually to the correlation which exists between existence and entities in S. adrā’s scheme. In the Nursian conceptualisation of life and matter, the less matter there is in an entity, the easier it is to see – in superficial terms, at least – the workings of the phenomenon of life. Nursi uses the example of a microscopic being, the materiality of which is minimal when compared, say, with a huge, lumbering beast such as an elephant. Both beings are imbued with life, but in the microscopic being, the material ‘veil’ beneath which the phenomenon of life is at work appears to be virtually transparent. From one perspective, Nursi seems to be saying, it is as though we can almost see in this minute being the unveiled existence of life itself. Naturally, this does not mean that a micro-organism such as a dust mite is any more alive than a huge pachyderm such as an elephant. What it does mean, however, is that since the tangibility of life and its effects appears to increase in proportion to the refinement of matter, it is clear that it must be life, and not matter, that is primordial. Nursi elaborates further: Is it therefore at all possible that there should be this many distillations of life, consciousness and spirit within this veil of materiality, and that the inner world which is beyond this veil should not be full of conscious beings and beings with spirits? Is it at all possible that the sources of these numberless distillations, flashes and fruits of meaning, spirit, life and the truth apparent in this material existence in the Manifest World should be ascribed only to matter and the motion of matter, and be explained by it? God forbid! Absolutely not! These innumerable distillations and flashes demonstrate that this material and manifest world is but a lace veil strewn over the inner and spirit worlds.78

Matter, then, which makes up the visible, material world or ‘realm of dominion’ (‘ālam al-mulk) is clearly not the driving force behind the motions and behaviours that it exhibits. What propels matter, Nursi argues, is the phenomenon of life, which, together with consciousness and spirit, ‘decree’ the motion of matter from beyond the ‘veil’ of materiality in the unseen realm. The source of life, consciousness and spirit, therefore, is the unseen rather than the visible realm, and from this Nursi is able to conclude that the unseen realm must, of necessity, be teeming with beings endowed with all three properties. Such beings include malā’ika or angels.

The argument from authority and the universality of belief in angels

Nursi then invokes the agreement which he claims exists among all Muslim scholars on the reality of angels and spirit beings to provide an ‘argument from authority’: It may be said that all the scholars of the speculative and the scriptural sciences have, knowingly or unknowingly, united to create a consensus in affirming, despite difference

163

The Qur’an Revealed  of expression, the existence and reality of the angels and spirit beings. One group of Peripatetic philosophers of the Illuminist School even, who made much progress in the study of matter, without denying the meaning of the angels, stated that each realm in creation has a spiritual, incorporeal essence. They described the angels thus. Also, a group of the early philosophers who were Illuminists, being compelled to accept the meaning of the angels, were only wrong in naming them the ‘Ten Intellects and Masters of the Realms of Creation’.79

Belief in angels – or in forces analogous to angels – is evidenced in all of the revealed religions, Nursi asserts, and a form of such belief exists even among those who claim no religion and who adhere to various different materialist doctrines. Through the inspiration and guidance of revelation, scholars of all the revealed religions have accepted that each realm of creation has an angel appointed to it, and have named them the ‘mountain angel’, the ‘sea angel’ and the ‘rain angel’, for example. Even the materialists and naturalists, whose reasoning is restricted to what is immediately apparent to them and who have in effect fallen from the level of humanity to that of inanimate matter, rather than being able to deny the meaning of the angels, have been compelled to accept them in one respect, though naming them the ‘flowing forces’ (quwa-i sāriyya).80

Consensus regarding the existence of supra-mundane beings known as angels exists among all Muslim scholars, regardless of their disciplinary or doctrinal leanings. Furthermore, the existence of beings which are recognisable as angels in the Quranic sense of the word is affirmed by all of the revealed religions: Christianity, for example, has a well-developed angelology, as indeed does Judaism. And even among non-believing naturalists, there are certain forces in the natural world which are described by them in terms which are not that far removed from the description of the nature and function of the malā’ika in the Quran, the h. adīth and in Muslim theological tradition. That angels – or forces which carry out tasks akin to those which pertain to angels – figure in different forms in the worldviews of believers and unbelievers alike is, for Nursi, evidence of their reality so compelling that it leaves no room for meaningful opposition. To those who are reluctant to accept the existence of angels and spirit beings, I would say this: on what do you base your view? What facts do you rely on that you oppose the conscious or otherwise unanimity of all the scholars concerning the existence and reality of the meaning of the angels and the real existence of spirit beings? And since, as was proved earlier, life is the revealer of beings, indeed, is their consequence, their quintessence; and since all the scholars are in effect unanimous in their acceptance of the meaning of the angels; and this world of ours has been filled to such a degree with animate creatures and beings with spirits; is it at all possible that the vastness of space and the rarefied heavens would remain empty of dwellers, have no inhabitants? Since the scholars of religion and philosophy, and of the speculative and scriptural sciences, have in effect agreed that beings are not restricted to this Manifest World; and since, despite being inanimate and inappropriate for the formation of spirits, the visible Manifest World has been adorned to such an extent with beings with spirits; existence is surely

164

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels not limited to it. There are numerous other levels of existence in relation to which the Manifest World is an embroidered veil.81

Nursi consolidates his appeal to authority by invoking the Quran, which, he says, is the source par excellence of clear and firm knowledge regarding the form, reality and function of angels. Furthermore, since, just as the sea is appropriate for fish, and the ‘world of the unseen’ and the ‘world of meaning’ appropriate for spirits, and this necessitates their being filled with them; and since all commands testify to the existence of the meaning of the angels; certainly and without any shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful form of the angels’ existence and spirit beings’ reality, and the most rational view of their nature which sound intellects will accept and acclaim, is that which the Quran has expounded and elucidated. For the miraculous Quran states that: “The angels are honoured slaves. Never contesting a command, they do whatever they are commanded. The angels are subtle, luminous beings, and are divided into different kinds.” 82

But Nursi’s appeal to authority in the context of the adherents of the revealed religions is not based solely on the strength of their belief in angels; rather, it also looks to the phenomenon of angels as an experiential reality. There are narratives which exist in all faith histories that tell of meetings between pious individuals and angels, or of visionary experiences and instances of indubitable inspiration which can be attributed only to those entities described in the revealed texts as angels. Indeed, says Nursi, the sighting by one prophet or sage of a single angel is enough to allow us to conclude that their existence is universal. The question of the angels and spirit beings is one of those questions in which the reality of a universal may be inferred from the existence of a single particular. If a single individual is seen, the existence of the species may be concluded. Whoever denies it, denies it as a member of the species to which it belongs. While whoever accepts the single individual is compelled to accept its whole species. Since it is thus, consider the following: Have you not seen and heard that all the scholars of the revealed religions throughout the ages from the time of Adam until now have agreed on the existence of the angels and the reality of spirit beings? The different groups of mankind have concurred in having seen and conversed with angels and in their narrations concerning them, as though they were discussing and narrating events about one another. Do you think that if a single angel had not been seen, and the existence of one or numerous individuals not been established through observation, and their existence not been perceived clearly, self-evidently, that it would have been at all possible for such accord and such a consensus to continue, and to continue persistently and unanimously in such an affirmative and positive manner, based on observation? Furthermore, is it at all possible, rational or feasible that the unanimous testimony of the prophets and saints, who are like the suns, moons and stars in human society, concerning the existence of the angels and spirit beings and their actually seeing them, should be prey to doubts or be the object of suspicion? Especially since they are qualified to speak in this matter. It is obvious that two people who are qualified to speak on a matter are preferable to thousands who are not. Moreover, in this question they are affirming a matter, and people who affirm a matter are preferable to thousands who deny or reject it.83

165

The Qur’an Revealed 

Angels as representatives of cosmic worship

Nursi then turns to the notion of angels as beings which ‘represent’ the glorification of other entities in the cosmos. Again, it is important here that we unpack Nursi’s exposition carefully, for from this point onwards his discourse throws light not only on the nature of angels themselves but also on the nature of external existence as a whole. If the creatures of the universe are observed with care, it may be seen that like particulars, universals have collective identities, each of which appears as a universal function; it is apparent that each performs a universal duty. For example, just as a flower as itself displays an embroidery full of art, and with the tongue of its being recites the Creator’s Names, so the garden of the globe resembles a flower, and performs an extremely orderly, universal duty of glorification. And just as a fruit issues a proclamation expressing its glorification of God within an order and regularity, so does a mighty tree in its entirety have a most well-ordered natural duty and worship. And just as a tree glorifies God through the words of its fruits, flowers and leaves, so do the vast oceans of the heavens glorify the AllGlorious Creator and praise the Sublime Maker through their suns, moons and stars, which are like words, and so on.84

An entity such as a flower may have many practical functions which follow on solely from its physical existence as a flower. It may provide nectar for bees, foodstuff for animals or humans, or aesthetic pleasure for those who may paint it, perhaps, or place it in a vase to admire. From the ‘Other-indicative’ (h. arf ī) perspective, however, its duty – and the duty of all other flowers, together with which it forms what Nursi calls a sort of ‘universal flower’ - is solely to ‘glorify’ God. Glorification, then, is the purpose for which all beings are created, be they flowers, trees, oceans or galaxies. But in what does this glorification consist? For Nursi, the glorification expressed by a flower, for example, consists in its being a locus of manifestation for certain configurations of Divine names, such as order, artistry, wisdom and beauty. The flower ‘glorifies’ God by acting as a mirror which ‘reflects’ these names and makes them visible to, and readable by, other creatures. It ‘glorifies’ God as Provider, for example, through the ‘word’ of the nectar that it gives to the bee. It ‘glorifies’ God as Orderer through the ‘words’ of its symmetry and equilibrium, and as Possessor of Beauty through the ‘word’ of its own aesthetic appeal, and so on. What, then, is the role of angels in this glorification? Nursi goes on to explain: Although external entities are outwardly inanimate and unconscious, they all perform extremely vital, living and conscious duties and glorification. Of a certainty, therefore, just as angels are their representatives expressing their glorification in the World of the Inner Dimensions of Things, those external beings are the counterparts, dwellings and mosques of those angels in the external and manifest world. With their universal and comprehensive worship, they represent the glorification of the large and universal beings in the universe.85

The ‘external entities’ that Nursi is talking about in particular here are those, he says, which lack both life and consciousness. Crystals, the sea, stars, planets, clouds – the list is virtually endless – are all examples of inanimate objects which, despite being inanimate and

166

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels unconscious, all act purposefully and, Nursi claims, ‘glorify’ God through their ‘conscious duties’. How does Nursi square the inanimateness of entities with the notion of conscious glorification? For Nursi, the problem with naturalism and scientism is that its exponents acknowledge the apparent purposefulness of the interplay of the constituent parts of the ‘natural’ world yet deny that there is an overarching telos behind the existence of the cosmos. That there appears to be an element of design, for example, in the process known as ‘natural selection’, is not refuted by evolutionists; however, they are careful to point out that it is an illusion and nothing more.86 Others talk about the propensity of inanimate objects in nature to ‘selforganise’, citing phenomena such as the structure of planets and galaxies, cloud formations, second-harmonic generation in non-linear optics, and so on, as examples.87 This ‘selforganisation’, however, is for them precisely what it says it is: things organise themselves, and no reference to a ‘cosmic organiser’ outside the system is deemed necessary. For the non-theist, this poses a dilemma – albeit one which is spirited away by what Nursi might have dismissed as pure sophistry. How is it possible for things which are inanimate and thus unconscious to display what appears to evidence of purpose, intelligence and design? The simplest solution is, of course, to appeal to naturalistic explanations – which, for Nursi, are not explanations at all – and dismiss any indications of design, intelligence and purpose in nature as mere illusions. After all, this is what evolutionary biologists such as Richard Dawkins do with alacrity all the time. For theists such as Nursi, however, the dilemma is not solved so easily. In Nursi’s eyes, the inability – or unwillingness – of unbelievers and sceptics to attribute creation to such a being forces them inevitably to attribute it to creation itself. Thus, he contends, creation itself and the ‘natural’ causes which work within it, are in effect credited with possessing attributes such as omnipotence and omniscience; yet, paradoxically, they are also portrayed as being purposeless and, ultimately, the result of pure chance and cosmic accident. Nursi’s argument is that while the building blocks of creation are, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than insentient units of matter, they act as though they possess knowledge, power and purpose. Their apparent possession of these attributes, he argues, is down to the fact that the created world is an assemblage of Divine – and therefore purposeful – acts which are spiritual in origin but ‘translated’ into corporeality by beings known as mala’ika (angels) – entities which, Nursi says, inhabit the ‘mosques’ that are inanimate entities. This, it may be argued, is what Nursi means when he says that the angels ‘represent’ the glorification of inanimate beings. If inanimate beings appear to function with purpose and consciousness, it is on account of the angelic presence which imbues their existence. Just as angels are, as we have noted, messengers from the realm of the unseen which ‘carry’ the creative command of God and manifest it in the phenomenal world in the form, say, of a snow crystal, those same angels are responsible not only for the apparent purposefulness exhibited by the snowflake in its function as a snowflake, but also for the glorification expressed by that snowflake as a locus of manifestation for one or more of the names of God. The angels tasked with what we may venture is the ‘ushering into external existence’ of the snowflake from the realm of the unseen are, at the same time, responsible for ‘representing’ the glorification of the snowflake – the outward expression of the names of God – once it comes into existence.

167

The Qur’an Revealed  This of course raises an important question. If the Quran is correct when it asserts that all created beings glorify God, why does a snow crystal or a cloud formation or a rock in the Nevada desert need angels to ‘represent’ – or, more precisely, to ‘re-present’ – the names of God they embody outwardly in order to glorify Him? If the apparent purposefulness and the apparent consciousness of the snow crystal are in fact nothing more than the actual purposefulness and the actual consciousness of the angel or angels which ‘bear’ the creative command that brings the snow crystal into existence in the visible realm, what is left that we can actually attribute to the snow crystal? Is there, in fact, any difference at all between the snow crystal and the ‘snow crystal angel’ which both ‘escorts’ it from the unseen realm to the visible realm and then ‘represents’ its glorification by exhibiting purposefulness and consciousness through it? We saw earlier how Nursi described everything “from lifeless planets and stars to raindrops” as ‘vehicles’ which angels mount in order to represent their glorification in the visible world of created phenomena. In the following passage, however, Nursi seems to blur the distinction between angel and ‘vehicle’ to the point where the two become virtually indistinguishable. Angels resemble human beings insofar as they know the universal aims of the AllGlorious Maker and conform to them through worship, but they are also contrary to them. For being beyond sensual pleasure and some partial wage, they consider sufficient the pleasure, perfection, delight and bliss they experience through the All-Glorious Maker’s attention, command, favour, consideration and name, through their perception of Him, connection with Him and proximity to Him. They labour with the purest sincerity, their duties of worship varying according to their different kinds, and according to the varieties of the creatures in the universe.88

Angels, then, are of diverse kinds, and their kinds are as numerous as the varieties of creature in the universe. Like in a government there are various officials in the various offices, so the duties of worship and glorification vary in the spheres of the realm of dominicality. For example, through the power, strength, reckoning and command of God Almighty, the Archangel Michael is like a general overseer of God’s creatures sown in the field of the face of the earth. If one may say so, he is the head of all the angels that resemble farmers. And, through the permission, command, power and wisdom of the All-Glorious Creator, the incorporeal shepherds of all the animals have a head, a supreme angel appointed to the task.89

The diversity of created beings means that there is also a diversity of creational functionality – different entities behave in different ways to multifariously different ends – and so it follows that there must be a diversity of ways in which ‘glorification’ is expressed. This lends further credence to the notion, intimated but not spelt out explicitly by Nursi, that angelic forces are for all intents and purposes of the same creational ‘stuff ’ as the beings whose glorification and worship they ‘represent’. Nursi gives the example of the Archangel Michael (Mīkā’il), who is associated traditionally with rain, thunder and lightning. Nursi describes him as the overseer of all that is grown in the earth, and as chief of all those angels that ‘resemble farmers’ – an allusion to the forces or material causes which facilitate

168

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels the production of crops and any other foodstuffs that emerge from the soil as a result of rainfall. Thus the rain cycle and all of its sub-systems, together with horticulture, agriculture and all of their attendant processes, are depicted as being ‘overseen’ by a hierarchy of angels, with Mīkā’il at its apex. Nursi cites a Prophetic narration which may serve to further illustrate the notion of creational systems as phenomena driven by, and imbued with, the consciousness, purposefulness and glorification of countless angels, each individual angel in its own particular form and its own particular place or rank in the greater system or hierarchy of which it is part. Thus, since it is necessary for there to be an angel appointed over each of these external creatures in order to represent in the ‘world of the inner dimensions of things’ the duties of worship and service of glorification which it performs, and to present them knowingly to the Divine Court, the way the angels are described in the narrations of the Prophet (PBWH) is certainly most appropriate and rational. For example he declared: “There are some angels that have either forty, or forty thousand, heads. In all the heads are forty thousand mouths, and with the forty thousand tongues in each of those mouths they glorify God in forty thousand ways.” 90

An angel with forty thousand heads, six trillion tongues and over forty thousand trillion ways of glorifying God is a rather difficult creature to envisage, and would seem to befit the plot of a science fiction novel rather than the Traditions of Muhammad. As Nursi develops the theme, however, the symbolic nature of the corporealization of the angelic forces becomes clear. There are certain mighty corporeal beings that perform their duties of worship with forty thousand heads in forty thousand ways. For example, the heavens glorify God with the suns and the stars. While the earth, which is a single being, performs its duty of worship, its dominical glorification with a hundred thousand heads and with the hundreds of thousands of tongues in each mouth. Thus the angel appointed to the globe of the earth has to be seen in this way in order to display this meaning in the ‘world of the inner dimensions of things’. I myself, even, saw a medium-sized almond tree which had close on forty large branches like heads. When I looked at one branch, I saw it had nearly forty smaller branches like tongues. Then I looked at one tongue of one of those small branches; forty flowers had opened on it. I studied the flowers considering the wisdom in them, and saw in each close on forty exquisite and well-ordered stamens, colours and arts, each of which proclaimed one of the All-Glorious Maker’s Names and their constantly varying manifestations. Is it at all possible that the All-Wise and Beauteous One, Who is the All-Glorious Maker of the almond tree, would impose this many duties on an inanimate tree, and not mount on it an appointed angel appropriate to it, to be like its spirit, to understand and express its meaning, proclaim it to the universe and present it to the Divine Court? 91

On a purely physical level, the almond tree in Nursi’s example may be seen from two perspectives. It may be seen in its entirety as a whole, that is as an almond tree, or it may be seen as a collection of closely interconnected and mutually dependent parts – its trunk, branches, leaves, blossoms and fruits. Each of the parts which make up the whole may in

169

The Qur’an Revealed  turn be understood to be a whole in its own right, while the entire tree is, for most people, arguably much more than simply the sum of its parts. On the level of the supra-mundane, however, the entity known as the almond tree becomes transparent and the ‘world of its inner dimensions’ becomes apparent. Nursi’s argument here is that on the level of the supra-mundane, the almond tree ceases to be just another unconscious botanical entity and becomes, instead, a vast conglomeration of differently structured and differently functioning angelic messengers which, through their mutual dependency and cooperation, form what is for all intents and purposes a single angelic entity which represents the glorification of the being we know in the phenomenal world as the almond tree. Nursi’s conceptual framework of ‘angelic representation’ means that from the perspective of the visible realm, all beings are as we see them: a raindrop is a raindrop, a desert is a desert and the planet Jupiter is the planet Jupiter. From the perspective of the unseen realm or the ‘world of the inner dimension of things’, however, entities are nothing more than conglomerations of angels or realms of angelic activity. As for the question posed earlier – namely whether there is actually any tangible difference between the physical entity and the angel which ‘mounts’ it in order to represent its glorification – the answer, one may contend, is yes and no, depending on the perspective from which it is viewed. As far as its ‘outward face’ is concerned, the almond tree is a material being. With regard to its ‘inner face’, however, the almond tree is nothing more than the creative command of God which has been ‘carried’ by an angel or angels and ‘translated’ into external existence. That material entities may be seen as material beings from one perspective and as supra-material conglomerations of angelic forces from another is supported by Nursi’s own approach to the dual nature of beings: now ‘vehicles’ for angels, as he puts it, and now angels made corporeal. Taking this argument to what may be argued is its logical conclusion, it would not be unfair to say that what we in the phenomenal world perceive as matter is, in fact, nothing more than the manifestation of Divine names through the medium of angelic activity. But while Nursi intimates this, he never actually articulates it explicitly. The closest he comes to declaring that the cosmos is, in fact, nothing but a vast array of innumerable and variously structured configurations of angels is in the section of his work in which he looks at the malā’ika in the context of causation.

Angels and causation

We have already seen in Chapter Three that Nursi regards material causes as nothing more than ‘veils’ draped over the creative acts of the Divine. Similarly, those things known as ‘natural laws’ are for him merely abstractions: they are human descriptions of how natural phenomena behave, made possible by observation and examination. Laws, then, have no extramental existence, and since they lack externality and physicality, they, like causes, cannot be said to have any effect. We have also seen, in the above passages, how the very stuff of the universe has been described by Nursi as the outcome of the workings of supramundane entities known as angels. In this final section, Nursi ties all of these threads and offers a novel explanation of cause and effect which, although contentious, is arguably the most thought-provoking and absorbing facet of his angelology.

170

  Aspects of the Unseen: Life, Spirit and Angels You should never think that the laws in force in this creation are sufficient for the universe to be alive, because those governing laws are insubstantial commands; they are imaginary principles; they may be considered as non-existent. If there were no absolutely obedient creatures called angels to represent them, make them apparent, and take their reins into their own hands, those laws could not be defined as existent, nor be represented as having a particular identity, nor be an external reality. Whereas, life is an external reality, and an imaginary command cannot sustain an external reality.92

The ‘laws of nature’ are not the reason that phenomena exist or that animate creatures are alive, Nursi says: the ‘laws of nature’ are merely descriptions of how phenomena behave and how animate creatures live. As such, they have no external existence: you cannot capture a law in a test-tube or dissect it with a scalpel. Laws are nothing more than principles which are abstracted by humans from their repeated observations of how the cosmos works. In short, a law describes what a phenomenon does; it does not make the phenomenon do it. Laws are thus descriptive; they are not prescriptive. For Nursi, how phenomena behave depends on the creative command of God, and so ‘natural laws’ are in effect nothing more than verbal depictions of the way God creates; they are a kind of mundane semiotic shorthand for the supra-mundane sunna or habitual creative practice of God. Just as mankind is a nation and human beings are the bearers, representatives and embodiments of the Shari‘a or code of divine laws which proceeds from the attribute of Divine speech, so are the angels a mighty nation, and those of them who are workers are the bearers, representatives and embodiments of the ‘code of laws pertaining to creation, which proceeds from the attribute of Divine will.’ They are a class of God’s slaves who are dependent on the commands of the creative power and pre-eternal will, which are the true effective agent, and for whom all the heavenly bodies are like places of worship, like mosques.93

For Nursi, then, angels are the ‘bearers’ not only of the Divine Names but also of the ‘creational laws’ decreed by Divine will. In other words, the ways in which phenomena are seen to behave, described by scientists as ‘the laws of nature’, are for Nursi nothing more than the ways in which angels behave as they carry out their duties, ‘bearing’ the commands of God. From a Nursian perspective, then, that which is called ‘cause and effect’ is in fact the result of the coming and going of angels as they ‘translate’ God’s names and creative commands continuously into tangible beings in the visible realm. To sum up, Nursi’s angelology depicts the malā’ika as conscious, supra-material beings that act in a sense as the interface between the ‘world of dominion’ (‘ālam al-malakūt) or the ‘hidden realm’, and the ‘world of the kingdom’ (‘ālam al-mulk) or the ‘visible realm’. In other words, they act as a kind of isthmus or bridge between the unseen realm of the Godhead and the seen realm of the physical world accessible to sense perception. Angels thus play what can only be called an intermediary role in the creative process, although one must be careful not to infer from this any actual creative power on their behalf. In accordance with the concept of continuous creation, outlined in Chapter Two, things which are created cannot themselves create: power belongs only to One. Similarly, knowledge – and with it, consciousness – cannot be attributed to inanimate creation in any

171

The Qur’an Revealed  meaningful sense of the word. And that which lacks power and knowledge cannot be said to have any discernible sense of purpose. But if we dismiss inanimate particles as unconscious, and their functions as purposeless, how do we account for the myriad wondrous new shapes and forms they bring into being? It would appear that only by bringing ‘angels’ into the equation does Nursi begin to make sense of this dichotomy. For angels are ‘bearers’ of Divine ‘commands’. According to the Quran, when God decrees that a thing come into existence, all He has to do is say ‘Be!’ and that thing appears. The angels are, in one sense, the ‘mirrors’ which are held up to the Divine Essence so that the attributes of God may ‘shine’ into them directly. Man cannot perceive God directly, and knows Him only through the reflection of the names that he views in the ‘mirror’ provided by the angels. The angels, then, act as the interface between God and man. Angels possess consciousness but not free will: their obedience is unwavering but it is never blind. The apparent consciousness of an otherwise seemingly blind, inanimate being is actually the consciousness of the angels, who ‘bear’ the creational commands which make up that being’s external existence. Facing God directly, the angel, equipped with the ability to reflect one or more of the Creator’s ‘names’, accepts God’s command and proceeds to ‘bear’ it. Angels carry the names from the unseen realm and display them in the manifest realm, which is where the names of God are given a sort of material existence in the form of created beings. For Nursi, the existence of angels thus helps to explain why matter behaves with such apparent purposefulness while at the same time exhibiting absolute ignorance, impotence and dependence. Yet there is more to Quranic angelology than merely serving to explain why material causes do not actually create anything. For the reflection of God’s names onto the ‘angels’ brings into existence nothing less than the material world of which we are part. Nursi’s angelology depicts them as so many prisms which catch the white light of God and refract it into the myriad colours of material existence, so that humankind may come to know and comprehend its true Source. Angels exist as ‘messengers’ and ‘intermediaries’, then, not for the sake of God, who is by default above all need, but for the sake of man, for whom recognition of the Divine names would, without the mediating role played by the angelic forces, be impossible.

172

Chapter Five Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’ The purpose of the creation of mankind I have only created jinn and men, that they may worship Me. 1 Allah created man and made him a comprehensive summary of the universe and an index of the book of the world, which comprises eighteen thousand worlds, and lodged in his essence a sample from each, in which is manifested one of His names. If man spends all of what is bestowed on him in the way of that for which he was created, for the purpose of offering thanks, a sort of praise, and obeying the Shari’a, which removes the rust of nature, each of those samples becomes a map [illuminating] his world, and a mirror reflecting it and the attribute mani­fested in it and the name it displays. In this way, with both spirit and body, man becomes a summary of the worlds of the seen and unseen, and mani­fests what is manifested in them. Through offering praise he becomes both a place of demonstration and a demonstrator of the attributes of perfection. This is implied by what Muhyi al-Din al-’Arabi said in explanation of the Hadith: “I was a hidden treasure, so I created creation that they might know Me.” That is, I created creation to be a mirror in which I might observe My beauty. 2

According to the Quranic verse cited above, the main purpose of the creation of ‘jinn and men’ is that they should worship God. Yet if one reads the verses which follow on from this, it becomes clear that God declares himself to be absolutely free of the need to be worshipped, thanked or praised.3 If this be the case, and the creatures’ worship or lack of worship neither adds to the glory of their Creator nor detracts from it, it becomes clear that as far as man is concerned, the sole recipient of benefit from this worship is man himself. In short, if God has no need of man’s worship, it is man himself who has all to gain from his existence as God’s bondsman, so long as he commits to that worship willingly; after all, if God had wanted, He could have created a race of men who would have loved and worshipped Him unconditionally and without reservation. Worship, then, is the purpose of God’s creation of men and jinn, but worship that is predicated on knowledge, love and the exercise of free will. The Quranic verse above is

173

The Qur’an Revealed  corroborated by the hadith qudsi quoted by Nursi in which God declares that He was a ‘hidden treasure’ and that the cosmos was created in order that its constituent beings might know Him. Taking the Quranic verse and the hadith together, one can conclude that the purpose of creation is that God, the ‘hidden treasure’, be somehow unearthed, known and worshipped. According to Ibn al-‘Arabī, however, the purpose of the existence of creation is not only that the creatures might know God; for him, the creation is nothing less than a mirror in which the Creator observes His own beauty – a looking-glass, if you will, in which the King of all beings sees His own reflection and declares that He truly is the fairest of all. Nursi corroborates this in the Tenth Word : There are numerous purposes for the existence of everything, and numerous results flow from its being. These are not restricted to this world and to the souls of men, as the people of misguidance imagine, being thus lost in vanity and purposelessness. On the contrary, the purposes for the existence and the results of the lives of all things relate to the following three categories. The first and the most exalted pertains to the Creator. It consists of presenting to the gaze of the Pre-Eternal Witness the bejewelled and miraculous wonders He has affixed to the object in question, as if in a military parade. To live for a fleeting second is enough to attain that glance. Indeed, the potentiality and intent for existence is enough, without ever emerging into life. This purpose is fully realized, for example, by delicate creatures that vanish swiftly and by seeds and kernels, each a work of art, that never come to life, that is, never bear fruit or flower. They all remain untouched by vanity and purposelessness. Thus the first purpose of all things is to proclaim, by means of their life and existence, the miracles of power and the traces of artistry of the Maker and display them to the gaze of the Glorious Monarch. The second purpose of all existence and the result of all being pertains to conscious creation. Everything is like a truth-displaying missive, an artistic poem or a wise word of the Glorious Maker, offered to the gaze of angels and jinn, of men and animals, and desiring to be read by them. It is an object for the contemplation and instruction of every conscious being that looks upon it. The third purpose of all existence and result of all being pertains to the soul of the thing itself, and consists of such minor consequences as the experience of pleasure and joy, and living with some degree of permanence and comfort. If we consider the purpose of a servant employed as a steersman on some royal ship, we see that only one hundredth of that purpose relates to the steersman himself - i.e. the wage he receives; ninety-nine hundredths of the purpose relate to the king who owns the ship. A similar relation exists between the purpose of a thing related to its own self and its worldly existence, and its purpose related to its Maker. In the light of this multiplicity of purposes we can now explain the ultimate compatibility between divine wisdom and economy on the one hand, and divine liberality and generosity - in fact, infinite generosity - on the other hand, even though they appear to be opposites and contradictory. In the individual purposes of things, liberality and generosity predominate, and the Name of Most Generous is manifested. From the point of view of individual purpose, fruits and grains are indeed beyond computation, and they demonstrate infinite generosity. But in universal purposes, wisdom predominates and the name of All-Wise is manifested. However many purposes a tree has, each of its fruits contains that many purposes, and these can be divided into the three categories we have established. Their universal purposes demonstrate an infinite

174

  Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’g wisdom and economy. Infinite wisdom and infinite generosity and liberality are thus combined, despite their apparent opposition. 4

One of the most important features of Divine speech as crystallised in the Quran is its ability to address all recipients of the Message in a way that they can understand. This is known as tanazzulāt or ‘Divine condescension’ – the framing of concepts in terms that can be grasped and digested by all who approach them in accordance with their capacity to understand. Of course it goes without saying that a God Who is above the need for worship – or anything else, for that matter - does not need a ‘mirror’ in which to observe His own beauty. But that is to miss the point. What the ‘hidden treasure’ hadith does is to employ a striking metaphor in order to convey in readily understandable terms a most subtle truth: since God exists, and He is the Creator, creation also exists. God and creation are conceptually inseparable, like the face and its reflection in the mirror, or the hand and its shadow on the wall. Primacy, however, lies with the existence of God; creation is secondary to, and dependent on, His being. The creation, then, is the mirror or shadow of its Creator, for its existence is dependent upon His existence and reflective of it. The explanation of Ibn al-‘Arabī brings another variable into the equation. While it has already been established that the purpose of man’s existence is to know and worship his Creator, the notion that the cosmos is a mirror held up to God’s Beauty brings into play the idea of love. For how can one look at the reflection of the Perfect and not love it for Its Own sake? We can therefore say that the purpose of the creation of mankind is that he might know, love and worship the One Who has created him. Knowledge, love and worship of God are therefore the reason why man was created. Moreover, knowledge, love and worship constitute their own reward: they are demanded of man not in order to benefit God but in order to benefit man himself. Indeed, what higher reward could man hope for than the knowledge, love and worship of the Absolute – the Source of all attributes of perfection and the ultimate Goal of all cosmic life? Therefore, as Nursi reiterates throughout the Risale-i Nur, the worship that is mentioned must be for our good: if we ask, ‘what is in it for us’, the answer must be worship, and the fruits thereof. To know, love and worship God is, given that God is God, its own reward, for to know, love and worship Him is to become aware of, and become immersed in, all of the attributes of perfection, tiny samples or snatches of which we find in our selves. To worship God should not connote the drudgery that is the lot of the slave; rather it should denote the understanding of, and ultimate absorption in, the Source of all perfections.

The creation – and man – as mirror to the Divine attributes

For Nursi, then, man has been created as a ‘comprehensive summary’ of the universe, an ‘index’ of the vast book that is the cosmos, and, as such, best placed among all of the creation to act as a mirror for all of the Divine names, small ‘samples’ of which have been placed in his being in order that he become not only a place of demonstration (maz.  har) for those Names, but a willing and purposeful demonstrator (muz.  hir) of them. Nursi explains in nine points exactly what it means – in theory – for man to be a mirror held up to God and a place of demonstration of the Divine names and attributes.

175

The Qur’an Revealed  The First is this: To weigh up on the scales of the senses put in your being the bounties stored up in the treasuries of Divine mercy, and to offer universal thanks. The Second: To open with the keys of the faculties placed in your nature the hidden treasuries of the sacred Divine Names. The Third: To consciously display and make known through your life in the view of the creatures in this exhibition of the world the wondrous arts and subtle manifestations which the Divine Names have attached to you. The Fourth: To proclaim your worship to the Court of the Creator’s dominicality verbally and through the tongue of your disposition. The Fifth: Like on ceremonial occasions a soldier wears all the decorations he has received from his king, and through appearing before the him, displays the marks of his favour towards him, this is to consciously adorn yourself in the jewels of the subtle senses which the manifestations of the Divine Names have given you, and to appear in the observant view of the Pre-Eternal Witness. The Sixth: To consciously observe the salutations of living beings to their Creator, known as the manifestations of life, and their glorifications of their Maker, known as the signs of life, and their worship of the Bestower of Life, known as the aims of life, and by reflecting on them to see them, and through testifying to them to display them. The Seventh: Through taking as units of measurement the small samples of attributes like the partial knowledge, will and power given to your life, it is to know through those measures the absolute attributes and sacred qualities of the All-Glorious Creator. For example, since, through your partial power, knowledge and will, you have made your house in well-ordered fashion, you should know that the Maker of the palace of the world is its Disposer, and Powerful, Knowing and Wise to the degree it is greater than your house. The Eighth: To understand the words concerning the Creator’s unity and Maker’s dominicality uttered by each of the beings in the world in its particular tongue. The Ninth: To understand through your impotence and weakness, your poverty and need, the degrees of the Divine power and dominical riches. Just as the pleasure and degrees and varieties of food are understood through the degrees of hunger and the sorts of need, so you should understand the degrees of the infinite Divine power and riches through your infinite impotence and poverty. The aims of your life, then, briefly, are matters like these. Now consider the nature of your life; its summary is this: It is an index of wonders pertaining to the Divine Names; a scale for measuring the Divine attributes; a balance of the worlds within the universe; a list of the mighty world; a map of the cosmos; a summary of the vast book of the universe; a bunch of keys with which to open the hidden treasuries of Divine power; and a most excellent pattern of the perfections scattered over beings and attached to time. The nature of your life consists of matters like these.

176

  Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’g Now, the form of your life and the manner of its duty is this: your life is an inscribed word, a wisdom-displaying word written by the pen of power. Seen and heard, it points to the Divine Names. The form of your life consists of matters like these. Now the true meaning of your life is this: its acting as a mirror to the manifestation of Divine oneness and the manifestation of the Eternally Besought One. That is to say, through a comprehensiveness as though being the point of focus for all the Divine Names manifested in the world, it is its being a mirror to the Single and Eternally Besought One.5

In theory, then, the aim of man’s life is to endeavour to become a ‘mirror’ held up to the Divine, and to function as a place of demonstration for, and as a wilful demonstrator of, God’s Names and Attributes of perfection. What this means for man in practice, and how such an objective may be met, is explained by Nursi in his exposition of the ‘Trust’ (amāna) and his discourse on the psycho-spiritual dynamics of a component of the human soul known in Arabic as anā or ‘I’.

The ‘Trust’

Man, generically, is the most comprehensive index of the Divine Names, for he is privileged with the manifestation of reflection of them all, as is alluded to in the verse – which follows - in which it is affirmed that Adam was taught ‘all of the names’. The stewardship over these names, the privilege and responsibility granted to man to manifest these names and act as the most brilliant of all the small mirrors which make up the vast mirror that is the cosmos, is alluded to in the verse which deals with the ‘Trust’. We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the Mountains; but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: but man undertook it - he was indeed unjust and foolish 6

A ‘trust’ is something that is given to an individual, and over which he has power of disposal: he is expected to use it in the manner prescribed by the giver of the trust, although he also has the power to go against the giver’s wishes and dispose of the trust in any way that he likes. In the context of the Creator-creature relationship, what is this ‘trust’ that man agreed to take upon himself, after cosmic phenomena such as the heavens and the mountains had refused it? Nursi is not alone in defining the ‘trust’ as man’s Godgiven ability to act as divine ‘vicegerent’; in accepting the ‘trust’, man takes it upon himself to act as God’s ‘representative’ on earth. To understand exactly what the Nursian conception of ‘representing’ God entails, we have to look to those verses in the Quran which refer to the creation of mankind. Several passages discuss the drama of man’s first appearance on the cosmic stage, but no account is quite as succinct as that which is given in verses 30 to 40 of al-Baqara. Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: “I will create a vicegerent on earth.” They said: “Wilt Thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood?- whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?” He said: “I know what ye know not.” And He taught Adam the names of all things; then He placed them before the angels, and said: “Tell me the names of these if ye are right.” They said: “Glory to Thee, of knowledge We have none, save what Thou Hast taught us: In truth it is Thou Who art perfect in knowledge and wisdom.” He said:

177

The Qur’an Revealed  “O Adam! Tell them their names.” When he had told them, God said: “Did I not tell you that I know the secrets of heaven and earth, and I know what ye reveal and what ye conceal?” And behold, We said to the angels: “Bow down to Adam”… 7

The key which unlocks the meaning of this passage lies in the ‘names’ which God ‘taught’ to Adam, who as the ‘first man’ represents the totality of humankind. For Nursi, like other gnostic thinkers in the Muslim tradition, the names taught by God to man are none other than the ‘beautiful names’ of God Himself. This is the ‘teaching of the Names,’ which was a miracle of Adam before the angels because of his ability to be God’s vicegerent on earth, and was a minor event. But it forms the tip of a universal principle which is as follows: it was the teaching, due to man’s comprehensive disposition, of countless sciences and numerous all-embracing branches of knowledge about the universe, and extensive learning about the Creator’s attributes and qualities, which afforded man superiority over not only the angels but also the heavens and earth and mountains in the question of the bearing of the Supreme Trust. And like the Quran states that through his comprehensive disposition, man is God’s spiritual vicegerent on earth, so the minor event in the Unseen of the angels prostrating before Adam and Satan not prostrating is the tip of a broad and universal observed principle; these hint at a extensive truth which is as follows: Through mentioning the angels’ obedience and submission before the person of Adam, and Satan’s pride and refusal, the Quran makes understood that most of the physical beings in the universe and their representatives and appointed beings are subjugated to man, and that man’s senses are predisposed and amenable to benefiting from all of them. And pointing out what a fearsome enemy and serious obstacle in the path of man’s progress are evil matter and its representatives and evil inhabitants, which corrupt man’s nature and drive him down wrong paths, the Quran of Miraculous Exposition, while speaking of a minor matter with Adam (PBWH), converses in elevated fashion with the whole universe and all mankind.8

In imparting knowledge of His names, not only does God teach man to recognise all of the divine attributes of perfection, but He also gives him the ability to display those attributes consciously and, in so doing, act as God’s ‘representative’ on earth. In other words, man is able to recognise divine attributes of perfection such as power, wisdom, mercy, beauty and the like simply by virtue of the fact that he is, in one sense, created in God’s image. It is on account of man’s potential to act as God’s representative that the angels were asked to acknowledge man’s creational status by ‘bowing down’ to him. In the cosmology of the Quran, angels are endowed with limited knowledge of God’s names, and while they worship God with perfect sincerity and awareness, they do so because they lack the free will to disobey. Man, on the other hand, is endowed not only with knowledge of all of God’s names, but also with free will: if man uses his knowledge of the names wisely and bows down to God of his own volition, he rises above the angels and fulfils his destiny as the jewel in the crown of creation. However, if he abuses his knowledge of the names and fails to fulfil his part of the ‘trust’, he sinks to a position described by the Quran as the ‘lowest of the low’.

178

  Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’g The ‘trust’, then, offers whoever accepts it the ability to know God and to ‘experience’ Him through His ‘beautiful names’ and attributes of perfection. But whoever accepts a trust must also undertake the responsibility to dispose of what he is given in accordance with the wishes of the giver: should he discharge his responsibility successfully, he will reap the reward; should he fail, he must face the consequences. In the context of the trust offered by God, the responsibility is a momentous one, for what it actually means in practice is reflecting the attributes of God and acting not only in His name, but also in complete accordance with His will. It is only when man grasps the significance of the Trust and what it means in practice to accept such an undertaking that he can see why cosmic phenomena such as the heavens and the mountains – both symbols of might and grandeur – refused the challenge. Whether man bears the ‘trust’ faithfully or reneges on his commitment depends for the most part on how he understands what is arguably the most important component of his creational make up, namely that aspect of his being which enables him to differentiate himself from other beings, known in Arabic as anā or ‘I’. Nursi’s exposition of the human ‘I’ and its centrality to the acquisition or repudiation of self-knowledge, God-knowledge and faith in the Divine is among his most important discourses on the psycho-spiritual nature of mankind and the Creator-creation relationship.

The human ‘I’

The anā is that element within each of us that enables us to say ‘I’ and to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the cosmos; it is the element which, like the straight line of its own orthographical form, draws an imaginary line across the rest of creation and, in so doing, brings it into view. If everything were white, white would have no meaning; it is only by drawing a small black line – an ‘I’, for example – on it that the white becomes visible. That the anā is different from the soul and the spirit is clear from Nursi’s assertion that it is has no real – i.e. external – existence, and is nothing more than an imaginary entity, like a unit of measurement. A kilo, for example, has no external existence, and has meaning only when we say ‘a kilo of apples’; a metre cannot be seen, touched or imagined unless it be in connection with a piece of material or a stretch of ground, and so on. The human ‘I’ has the same quality: it is there purely in order to show up or make manifest the existence of things other than itself. As an abstract tool, then, it has no reality over and above the things which it measures. A further indication that the ‘I’ should not be conflated with the soul is Nursi’s assertion that the ‘I’ is a component of the ‘Trust’. That the ‘Trust’ was accepted by man after the sky, heavens and mountains had shrunk back from accepting such a heavy responsibility is evidence, according to the Quran, of man’s compound ignorance and self-oppression – traits which belong to the lowest level of the soul rather than to the anā. The ‘I’ is posited by Nursi as being the means by which the true nature and purpose of the creation may be made known; it is nothing less than the clue with which the riddle of Divine and human existence may be solved: Just as the ‘I’ is the key to the Divine Names, which are hidden treasures, so is it the key to the locked talisman of creation; it is a problem-solving riddle, a wondrous talisman. When its nature is known, both the ‘I’ itself, that strange riddle, that amazing talisman, is

179

The Qur’an Revealed  disclosed, and it discloses the talisman of the universe and the treasures of the Necessary World. The key to the world is in the hand of man and is attached to his self. For while being apparently open, the doors of the universe are in fact closed. God Almighty has given to man by way of a Trust, such a key, called the ‘I’, that it opens all the doors of the world; He has given him an enigmatic ‘I’ with which he may discover the hidden treasures of the Creator of the universe. But the ‘I’ is also an extremely complicated riddle and a talisman that is difficult to solve. When its true nature and the purpose of its creation are known, as it is itself solved, so will be the universe. 9

One of the most striking things about the opening paragraph of Nursi’s treatise on the ‘human I’ is a simple sentence which actually informs much of the Nursian endeavour, and in which we are able to find the subtext within his interpretation of the ‘book of beings’ that is the cosmic realm, as well as his interpretation of the Quran, in which that metaphorical book is mirrored. The assertion is made in an almost throwaway manner, and given the weight of the conceptual material on the ‘human I’ in which it is embedded, is quite easily overlooked. The key to understanding the world, Nursi says, is in the hand of man, and is attached to the enigmatic ‘human I’, which is a yardstick enabling him to grasp the measure of all things, including the names and attributes of God. This is a key that man needs to use, Nursi says, for “while being apparently open, the doors of the universe are in fact closed.” For Nursi, the myth of the ‘open doors of creation’ is one of the biggest obstacles to human felicity, simply because it appears to demystify the world through the provision of spurious answers to the fundamental questions which man poses of himself and his surroundings while attempting to come to terms with the basic existential dilemma of his own being. At the heart of the ‘open doors’ myth is the erroneous notion that most of man’s most searching existential questions - Where am I from? Where am I now? What must I do? Where am I going? - have been answered in one way or other, and that those questions which remain unsolved will, one day, yield to human knowledge and achieve closure. Furthermore, champions of the myth believe, this knowledge will be provided not by man’s serious questioning of his own self but through disciplines such as psychoanalysis, which places man at the centre of his own universe; and through approaches such as scientism, which bestows absolute epistemological primacy upon science, advocating the application of scientific theory and methods in all fields of enquiry about the world, including areas which, its detractors claim, are outside its sphere of competence, such as morality, art, ethics and religion.10 And at the heart of scientism, of course, lies the acceptance on purely a priori grounds of the necessity of the causal nexus and the ubiquitous yet ethereal ‘laws of nature’, an ideological position which appears to repudiate all attempts to define the universe in any but the most materialistic of terms. For the scientist who is an advocate of scientism, the very real efficacy of causes and the primacy of ‘natural laws’ are taken for granted, and all subsequent discussion about the meaning of the world and how it works is mediated by those unquestioned assumptions. This means that any attempt to bring God into the equation in any serious discussion with advocates of the scientistic approach is blocked from the very beginning by the uncontested premises upon which materialistic science is founded.11 Implicit in this positivist worldview, of course, is the notion that the material world is the only world that we can really comprehend in and of itself, and that man merely wastes his

180

  Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’g time thinking that anything mysterious, esoteric or otherworldly is at play in the universe. For Nursi, it is not scientific progress per se that is to blame for the tendency to see the doors of the universe as open, but rather the arrogance which accompanies a scientistic approach to such progress. For Nursi, it is imperative that man learn to see past superficialities and acknowledge the Ground from which all things spring: Know, O friend. Most of the knowledge of people about the earth and what they see as evident are based on a superficial familiarity, which is a veil spread on compound ignorance. They do not have any real foundations. For this reason, the Quran draws the attention of man to the usual and the ordinary. With its piercing expressions it draws aside the veil of superficial familiarity, shows man how things seen as usual and ordinary under the veil of familiarity are in fact extraordinary. 12

In order to see past the superficial and acknowledge not only the Source but also the purpose of his own existence, man has been given this ‘human I’ – a slight and seemingly insignificant entity, but one which is capable of opening those closed doors of creation beyond which the answers to man’s most penetrating questions are to be found. The ‘I’, then, is considered by Nursi to be part of the ‘Trust’ given to man by God. When we understand the meaning of ‘I’, Nursi assures us, the locked doors of creation will open and the riddle of cosmic existence will be solved. The ability of the ‘I’ – the self – to know God stems from the fact that it contains within it what Nursi calls ‘indications and samples’ which reflect the attributes and functions of God. In this sense, the ‘I’ is like a unit of measurement which exists solely for the sake of revealing the existence and measure of something else. However, like any other unit of measurement, the ‘I’ does not have a concrete material existence: The All-Wise Maker gave to man as a Trust an ‘I’ which comprises indications and samples that show and cause to recognize the truths of the attributes and functions of His dominicality, so that the ‘I’ might be a unit of measurement and the attributes of dominicality and functions of Divinity might be known. However, it is not necessary for a unit of measurement to have actual existence; like hypothetical lines in geometry, a unit of measurement may be formed by hypothesis and supposition. It is not necessary for its actual existence to be established by concrete knowledge and proofs... Since an absolute and all-encompassing thing has no limits or end, neither may a shape be given to it, nor may a form be conferred on it, nor may it be determined; what its quiddity is may not be comprehended. For example, an endless light without darkness may not be known or perceived. But if a line of real or imaginary darkness is drawn, then it becomes known. Thus, since God Almighty’s attributes like knowledge and power, and Names like All-Wise and All-Compassionate are all-encompassing, limitless, and without like, they may not be determined, and what they are may not be known or perceived. Therefore, since they do not have limits or an actual end, it is necessary to draw a hypothetical and imaginary limit. The ‘I’ does this. It imagines in itself a fictitious dominicality, ownership, power and knowledge: it draws a line. By doing this it places an imaginary limit on the all-encompassing attributes, saying, “Up to here, mine, after that, His;” it makes a division. With the tiny units of measurement in itself, it slowly understands the true nature of the attributes. 13

181

The Qur’an Revealed  The yardstick of the human ‘I’ is needed, then, because the attributes and names of God, such as knowledge, power, mercy, compassion and wisdom, are all-encompassing, limitless and without like. In order to discern them, man must impose on them an imaginary limit, like the line of darkness that is used to make known the light. This imaginary limit is placed on the Divine attributes of perfection by the human ‘I’. How the ‘I’ does this, Nursi contends, is perfectly simple: it imagines that it is the owner of its own self. In other words, it claims ownership over all of the attributes of perfection that it experiences as part of its own existence. The human self looks at the power, beauty, wisdom, compassion and knowledge within its own being and claims to be the owner of them all. This ownership appears to be very real, but, as Nursi contends, it is illusory, its function being simply to reveal or indicate the true Owner of the attribute. For example, with its imagined dominicality over what it owns, the ‘I’ may understand the dominicality of its Creator over contingent creation. And with its apparent ownership, it may understand the true ownership of its Creator, saying: “Like I am the owner of this house, so too is the Creator the owner of the universe.” And with its partial knowledge, it may understand His knowledge, and with its small amount of acquired art, it may understand the originative art of the Glorious Maker. For example, the ‘I’ says: “As I made this house and arranged it, so someone must have made the universe and arranged it,” and so on. 14

Similarly, through his own knowledge, man may understand the knowledge of God; through his own art, man may understand the art of the Creator, and so on. Man looks at his own creative powers and extrapolates from them, concluding that whoever or whatever is responsible for the creation of the universe must possess similar powers, but on a truly cosmic scale. At this embryonic stage of man’s spiritual journey, he ‘shares’ the attributes between himself and God, reasoning that since he has power, God too must have power, but on a scale befitting God; the same applies to all of the divine attributes of perfection. Thousands of mysterious states, attributes and perceptions which make known and show to a degree all the Divine attributes and functions are contained within the ‘I’. That is to say, the ‘I’ is mirror-like, and, like a unit of measurement and tool for discovery, it has an indicative meaning; having no meaning in itself, it shows the meaning of others. 15

According to Nursi, the ‘I’, then, is nothing but a mirror-like unit of measurement, or a tool through which man is able to discover the Creator: it has no meaning in itself, and exists only to reveal the existence and meaning of the absolute. However, the ‘I’ is a double-edged sword, as Nursi points out, for while it is designed to lead man to God, if misunderstood it may lead man in the other direction. Indeed, as Nursi points out, the ‘I’ has two faces. The first of these faces looks towards good and existence. With this face it is only capable of receiving favour; it accepts what is given, itself it cannot create. This face is not active; it does not have the ability to create. Its other face looks towards evil and goes to nonexistence. That face is active; it has the power to act. Furthermore, the real nature of the ‘I’ is indicative; it shows the meaning of things other than itself. Its dominicality is imaginary. Its existence is so weak and insubstantial that in itself it cannot bear or support anything at all. Rather, it is a sort of scale or measure, like a thermometer or barometer,

182

  Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’g that indicates the degrees and amounts of things; it is a measure that makes known the absolute, all-encompassing and limitless attributes of the Necessary Being. Thus, he who knows his own self in this way, and realizes and acts according to it, is included in the good news of, Truly he succeeds who purifies it. 16 He truly carries out the Trust, and through the telescope of his ‘I’, he sees what the universe is and what duties it is performing. When he obtains information about the universe, he sees that his ‘I’ confirms it. This knowledge will remain as light and wisdom for him, and will not be transformed into darkness and futility. When the ‘I’ fulfils its duty in this way, it abandons its imaginary dominicality and supposed ownership, which are the units of measurement, and it says: “His is the sovereignty and to Him is due all praise; His is the judgement and to Him will you all be brought back.” It achieves true worship. It attains the rank of the Most Excellent of Patterns,17 as confirmed by the Quran.18

Nursi’s assertion that the ‘I’ has two faces – one which looks towards ‘good and existence’ and the other which looks towards ‘evil...and non-existence’ – is further confirmation, if any were needed, that man is incapable not only of creating anything, but, more importantly, that he is incapable of producing anything that is good. Good is from God alone: it is the ‘default setting’, as it were, in creation, and if it appears to issue from human action, it is down not to the will of man but the will of God. If man does something good, it is no favour on his part towards God; nor is it anything for which he is to be commended as far as the good is concerned in and of itself. Since man cannot produce ‘good’, he can appear to do good only by not doing its opposite. In other words, the only thing that man can do is to decide not to do evil. This may appear somewhat sophistic at first glance, but the distinction between doing good and not doing evil is an important one for Nursi. Man, in reality, cannot do anything: even his not doing evil is, in a sense, passive rather than active. It is akin to refusing to look at the light by keeping one’s eyes closed: the light – the good – is there, but one’s unwillingness to open one’s eyes constitutes an act of will which would prefer to stay in darkness. Nursi’s claim that the active face of the ‘I’ is the face which ‘looks towards evil and goes to non-existence’ should not, therefore, be construed as intimating that evil is somehow the creation of man. Indeed, given that evil is equal to non-existence, it cannot be the creation of anything. Nursi’s attribution of evil to the human ‘I’ is in fact the attribution of the will to do evil rather than the creation of it. This has been explained, albeit in a slightly different context, in the earlier chapter on causality. When Nursi talks about the abandonment of the ‘imaginary dominicality’ enjoyed by the ‘human I’, he is alluding to the general sense of ownership that man has over the attributes that appear to be part of his make-up, for it is the metaphorical ‘surrender’ of man’s temporary and illusory ownership over his own attributes that underpins the notion of islām or submission. For it is only by ‘giving up’ ones claims to ownership of one’s attributes that one can begin to comprehend the idea of ‘purification of the self ’ which lies at the heart of Quranic – and, by extension, Nursian spirituality. True ‘surrender’ is only possible if the ‘I’ is realised for what it is, namely a nebulous, insubstantial mechanism that exists solely to indicate its Creator. Once it has truly accepted this, the ‘I’ will abandon its imaginary ownership and admit that all attributes belong to God alone. It will realise that whatever it appears to ‘own’ is there in the form of a loan, to be ‘given back’ to its rightful Owner. To ‘give back’ the attributes means to use them in a

183

The Qur’an Revealed  manner dictated by the One who ‘gave’ them in the first place. To submit one’s (imaginary) knowledge, for example, means to nurture it for God’s sake and to use it in accordance with His will alone. It also means to attribute it to Him at all times and under all circumstances, and not to appropriate it for oneself or to imagine that one has any real power of disposal over it. Submission involves the conscious attribution of all of the attributes of perfection to God, thus turning the self quite consciously into a mirror through which God’s attributes can be reflected for others to see. The failure of the ‘human I’ to acknowledge its true nature and surrender the imaginary ownership of its attributes amounts to a complete betrayal of the ‘Trust’ that man accepted to bear. But if, forgetting the wisdom of its creation and abandoning the duty of its nature, the ‘I’ views itself solely in the light of its nominal and apparent meaning, if it believes that it owns itself, then it betrays the Trust, and it comes under the category of, And he fails who corrupts its.19 It was of this aspect of the Trust, therefore, which gives rise to all ascribing of partners to God, evil and misguidance, that the heavens, earth and mountains were terrified; they were frightened of associating hypothetical partners with God. Indeed, if the ‘I’ is not known for what it is, an insubstantial alif, a thread, a hypothetical line, it may burgeon in concealment under the ground, gradually swelling. It will permeate all parts of a human being. Like a gigantic dragon it will swallow up the human being; that entire person with all his faculties will, quite simply, become pure ‘I’. Then too, the ‘I-ness’ of the human race gives strength to the individual ‘I-ness’ by means of human racialism and national racialism, and the ‘I’, gaining support from the ‘I-ness’ of the human race, contests the commands of the Glorious Maker, like Satan. Then, using itself as a yardstick, it compares everyone, everything even, with itself; it divides God Almighty’s sovereignty between them and other causes. It falls into ascribing partners to God on a vast scale, indicating the meaning of: To assign partners to God is verily a great transgression.20 It is just like a man who steals a brass coin from the public treasury; he can only justify his action by agreeing to take a silver coin for each of his friends who is present. So the man who says: “I own myself,” must believe and say: “Everything owns itself.” Thus, while in this treacherous position, the ‘I’ is in absolute ignorance. Even if it knows thousands of branches of science, with compounded ignorance it is most ignorant. For when its senses and thoughts yield the lights of knowledge of the universe, those lights are extinguished because such an ‘I’ does not find any material within itself with which to confirm, illuminate and perpetuate them. Whatever it encounters is dyed with the colours that are within it. Even if it encounters pure wisdom, the wisdom takes the form, within that ‘I’, of absolute futility. For the colour of an ‘I’ that is in this condition is atheism and ascribing partners to God, it is denial of God Almighty. If the whole universe is full of shining signs, a dark point in the ‘I’ hides them from view, as though extinguished. 21

The alternative, as Nursi points out, is for the ‘I’ within man to hold onto its illusory ownership and deny that there is a Creator with greater claim to sovereignty. This happens when the ‘I’ fails or refuses to recognise its true function and sees itself solely in the light of its nominal and apparent meaning. If the ‘I’ believes that it owns itself, it cannot act consciously and sincerely as the ‘vicegerent’ of God, and thus fails the ‘trust’.

184

  Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’g For Nursi, it is not difficult to understand why an ‘I’ would choose the path of selfassertion rather than self-submission. If man is created in God’s image, with small ‘samples’ or ‘reflections’ of the Divine attributes deposited in his innermost being in order to allow him to recognise God, is it not surprising that he should want to claim these attributes as his own? When one is so used to power, wisdom, beauty and the like, to be told that they belong elsewhere and must be ‘surrendered’ is to invite incredulity, often followed by rebellion and denial. The longer that the ‘I’ claims ownership, the more difficult it will become to submit. Eventually, the ‘I’ swells, puffed up by its imaginary sovereignty, until it transforms the person into a creature that is propelled purely by considerations of ‘self ’. Rather than using the ‘I’ as a yardstick to indicate God, it begins to measure all other things against itself, and becomes the centre of its own universe. Furthermore, in order to retain the ownership it believes it exercises over its attributes, it begins to ‘divide’ the absolute sovereignty of God between itself and other beings. Instead of attributing power to God, for example, it attributes it to nature, to causes, and to other beings. Moreover, in order to justify its own ownership over its attributes, it acknowledges – and even encourages - the feeling of ownership of other things and other beings over their attributes. If the ‘I’ is to claim that it owns itself, it also has to believe that other things own themselves too, thus justifying its usurpation of attributes that belong not to the ‘I’ but to God. Such a claim, of course, opens the way for shirk, or the ascription to God of ‘partners’ – the cardinal and unforgivable sin which the heavens and the mountains were terrified of committing should they accept the ‘trust’ and fail.

The line of prophethood and the line of philosophy

From his explanation of the psycho-spiritual dynamics of the human ‘I’ which operate on the level of the individual, Nursi then looks at the whole of human history through the same prism. From the time of Adam until the present day, he says, the story of mankind has been the story of two main currents or modes of thought: the ‘line of prophethood’ and the ‘line of philosophy’. In Nursian parlance, the ‘line of prophethood’ signifies that particular mode of thought in which the human ‘I’ or anā is in a state of equilibrium. In this state, it recognises its own true function, which is to act as a tool of measurement that is designed to indicate something other than itself. The ‘line of prophethood’ is the line followed by the ‘I’ when it admits to its own absolute poverty and dependence; it is the line followed by the ‘I’ when it acknowledges that it is not the owner but, rather, the owned. As is abundantly clear from the word ‘prophethood’, the ‘I’ which walks this line walks it in a state of submission to God, using its mirror-like being to reflect the Divine Names and Attributes and utilising its capacities in order to know, love and worship its Creator. The ‘I’ which is in this state contains within it, Nursi says, the seed of the ‘tree of Tuba’ – the heavenly ‘tree of bliss’ which symbolises the peace and blessings of eternal life in the presence of God. Juxtaposed against the ‘line of prophethood’ is what our author calls the ‘line of philosophy’. Nursi uses the word ‘philosophy’ on numerous occasions in the Risale-i Nur, but not always to denote the same thing, and only rarely in the sense to which most of us are accustomed, i.e. philosophy as the investigation of the nature, causes or principles of

185

The Qur’an Revealed  reality, knowledge or values, based on logical reasoning rather than on empirical methods. While he does use the term in its classical sense, more often than not his use of the term ‘philosophy’ is largely pejorative, alluding to the materialistic interpretation of science which had by his time given rise to various intellectual, socio-cultural and political movements which were largely atheistic in nature. Nursi himself makes a distinction between the kind of philosophy that he deems acceptable and the kind that he finds dysfunctional to human happiness. The philosophy the Risale-i Nur strikes at fiercely and attacks is not absolute, but the harmful sort. For the philosophy and wisdom that serve the life of human society, and morality and human attainments, and industry and progress, are reconciled with the Quran. Indeed, such philosophy serves the Quran’s wisdom and does not oppose it. This sort the Risale-i Nur does not bother with. As for the other sort, since it both leads to misguidance, atheism, heedlessness and misguidance; and since with its spellbinding wonders it opposes the Quran’s miraculous truths; the Risale-i Nur attacks and deals slaps at it with the powerful proofs in the comparisons contained in most of its parts. It does not attack beneficial, rightly-guided philosophy. Members of the secular schools can therefore embrace the Risale-i Nur without hesitation or objection.22

In general, then, when Nursi denigrates ‘philosophy’, he is denigrating those products of human intellection which are used not in the service of religion but in the service of the human self – the ‘I’ – or, collectively, mankind and human ‘progress’. The ‘I’ which walks the ‘line of philosophy’ is the ‘I’ which has turned its face away from God; it is the ‘I’ which refuses to admit its innate poverty and need, and which persists stubbornly in its claim of ownership of the attributes it finds within itself, shying away at all costs from returning them to their rightful Owner by acting volitionally as His ‘mirror’. For Nursi, then, the history of human society is the history of the tension which has existed between these two lines or modes of thought. However, the ‘line of philosophy’ is not beyond redemption, for when it follows the ‘line of prophethood’, it benefits human life and is the cause of true progress and felicity. It is clear that when Nursi talks of ‘philosophy’ following ‘prophethood’, what he means is that in order for man to prosper and attain true salvation, human reason must serve Divine revelation rather than seek to supersede or claim primacy over it.

The line of prophethood

The first line, Nursi says, is the ‘line of prophethood’, which he posits as the original default setting of the human spirit. It is, he avers, the origin of sheer worship and the mode of being in which the ‘I’ knows itself to be a bondsman, serving One other than itself. Here, the ‘I’ has only an indicative meaning; it understands that it bears the meaning of another. Its existence is dependent; that is, it believes that its existence is due only to the existence of another, and that the continuance of its existence is due solely to the creativity of that other. Its ownership is illusory; that is, it knows that with the permission of its owner it has an apparent and temporary ownership. Its reality is shadow-like; that is, a contingent and insignificant shadow that displays the manifestation of a true and

186

  Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’g necessary reality. As to its function, being a measure and balance for the attributes and functions of its Creator, it is conscious service. It is in this way that the prophets, and the pure ones and saints who were from the line of the prophets, regarded the ‘I’, they saw it in this regard, and understood the truth. They handed over the sovereignty to the Lord of All Sovereignty and concluded that that Lord of All Glory has no partner or like, neither in His sovereignty, nor in His dominicality, nor in His Divinity. He has no need of assistant or deputy. The key to all things is in His hand. He has absolute power over all things. They also concluded that causes are but an apparent veil; nature is the set of rules of His creation, a collection of His laws, and the way in which He demonstrates His power. Thus, this shining, luminous, beautiful face is like a living and meaningful seed out of which the Glorious Creator has created a Tuba-tree23 of worship, the blessed branches of which have adorned with luminous fruits all parts of the world of humanity. By scattering the darkness of all the past, it shows that that long past time is not a place of non-existence and a vast graveyard as philosophy would have it, but is a radiant garden and a place of light for the luminous souls who have departed this world, who have cast off their heavy loads and remain free. It is a luminous, many-runged ascent and an orbit of lights for passing souls in order that they may jump to the future and eternal felicity.24

The line of philosophy

The second line is the ‘line of philosophy’, which regards the ‘I’ as carrying no meaning other than its own. That is to say, it declares that the ‘I’ points only to itself, that its meaning is in itself. It considers that the ‘I’ works purely on its own account. It regards its existence as necessary and essential, that is, it says that it exists in itself and of itself. It falsely assumes that the ‘I’ owns its own life and is the real master in its sphere of disposal. It supposes it to be a constant reality. And it considers the duty of the ‘I’ to be perfection of self, which originates from love of self, and likewise, philosophies have constructed their modes of thought on many such corrupt foundations. We have given definite proof in our other treatises, especially in the Words, and more particularly in the Twelfth and Twenty-Fifth Words, of how baseless and rotten these foundations are. Even men like Plato and Aristotle, Ibn-i Sina and Farabi, who were the most illustrious representatives and authorities of the line of philosophy, said that the ultimate aim of humanity is to liken themselves to the Necessary Being, that is to say, to actually resemble Him.25 They thus delivered judgement in the manner of Pharaoh, and, by whipping up ‘I-ness’ and allowing polytheism to run free in the valleys, opened the way to numerous different ways of associating partners with God, like worship of causes, idols, nature, and the stars. They closed the doors of impotence and weakness, poverty and need, deficiency and imperfection, which are intrinsic to human beings, thus obstructing the road to worship. Being immersed in Naturalism and being completely incapable of emerging from associating partners with God, they were unable to find the broad gate of thanks.

187

The Qur’an Revealed  On the other hand, the line of prophethood considered, in the manner of a worshipper, that the aim of humanity and duty of human beings is to be moulded by God-given ethics and good character, and, by knowing their impotence to seek refuge with Divine power, by seeing their weakness to rely on Divine strength, by realizing their poverty to trust in Divine mercy, by perceiving their need to seek help from Divine riches, by seeing their faults to ask for pardon through Divine forgiveness, and by realizing their deficiency to be glorifiers of Divine perfection. So, it is because the philosophy which does not obey the line of religion thus lost its way, that the ‘I’ took the reins into its own hands and ran into all sorts of misguidance. And out of the ‘I’ that was in this position, a tree of Zaqqum26 sprang forth and engulfed more than half of mankind. Thus, in the branch of power of animal appetites of that tree, the fruits it has presented to mankind are idols and goddesses. Because, according to the principles of philosophy, power is approved. “Might is right” is the norm, even. It says, “All power to the strongest.” “The winner takes all,” and, “In power there is right.” It has given moral support to tyranny, encouraged despots, and urged oppressors to claim divinity. Also, by appropriating the beauty in works of art and the fineness in the decoration and attributing them to the works of art themselves and their decoration, and by not relating them to the manifestation of the sacred and sheer beauty of the Maker and Fashioner, it says: “How beautiful it is,” instead of, “How beautifully made it is,” thus regarding each as an idol worthy of worship. Moreover, because it admires a fraudulent, boasting, ostentatious, hypocritical beauty that may be sold to anyone, it has acclaimed the hypocrites, and has made idol-like people monuments for its own worshippers. In the branch of power of passion of that tree, it has nurtured the fruits of greater and lesser Nimrods, Pharaohs, and Shaddads ruling over unfortunate mankind.27 In the branch of power of intellect, it has produced fruits like atheism, materialism, and naturalism in the mind of humanity, and has thrown it into confusion. 28

In his elucidation of the perils of the line of philosophy, Nursi discusses the degeneration of the human ‘I’ in terms of the misuse and imbalance of certain ‘powers’ which inhere in man’s soul. Nursi’s exposition of man’s – or, rather, the soul’s – ‘powers’ appears in a number of places in the Risale, but the most comprehensive treatment can be found in his exegesis of the opening chapter of the Quran, al-Fātih. a, in his Ishārāt al-i‘jāz (Signs of Miraculousness). There he says that the human soul possesses three powers (quwwa): the power of animal appetites (al-quwwa al-shahwiyya al-bahīmiyya), the function of which is to attract benefits; the power of animal passion or repulsion (al-quwwa al-ghad.  abiyya), the function of which is to ward off harm; and the power of intellect (al-quwwa al-‘aqliyya), the function of which is to distinguish between that which is beneficial and that which is harmful.29 It is how these powers are used by the human ‘I’ that determines the soul’s behavioural states. Each power may be either overused, which leads to excess (ifrāt. ) or it may have a deficiency (nuqs.ān), in which case it leads to negligence (tafrīt. ). Nursi warns against both extremes – excess and negligence – and cautions man to aim for the ‘middle way’, which is justice.30 For example, deficiency in the power of intellect results in foolishness (ghabāwa) and idiocy (balāda), while excess leads to deception and trickery (jarbaza), preoccupation with

188

  Man in the cosmos: Nursi and the human ‘I’g trivia and inordinate attention to minutiae (tadqīq f ī safāsif al-‘umūr). When the power of intellect is used properly and attains the ‘middle way’, the result, Nursi says, is wisdom (h. ikma).31 A deficiency in the power of animal appetites results in lassitude (khumūd) and lack of enthusiasm (‘adam al-ishtiyāq) while at the other end of the spectrum, excess results in depravity and dissolution (fajr). When the ‘middle way’ is attained, however, man is led to a state of mind in which he is encouraged to do what God has commanded and eschew what he has forbidden.32 As far as the power of passion/repulsion is concerned, underuse leads to fear and cowardice (jabāna) while an excess results in rashness (tahawwur), a precursor of tyranny (z.  ulm) and despotism (istibdād). The ‘middle way’ as far as this power is concerned is courage (shajā‘a), which enables man to uphold the message of Divine Unity and protect the sanctity of Islam.33 True justice, Nursi says, obtains when the ‘middle way’ is achieved. As far as the human ‘I’ is concerned, the middle way is followed when the true reality of the ‘I’ is perceived and when its duty to submit its imaginary ownership over its own attributes is acknowledged and carried out. In order to achieve equilibrium and to find the ‘straight path’ of salvation – the ‘middle way’ of Islam – the human ‘I’ needs to strike a careful balance between the extremes which exist in each of the soul’s three main ‘powers’. To achieve equilibrium is to follow by default the line of prophethood; unwillingness or inability to achieve equilibrium is to submit to the dictates of the ‘line of philosophy’. To illustrate this, Nursi compares in a number of lucid examples the results of behaviours rooted in the line of prophethood with those which originate in its polar opposite. First Example: According to the rule of: Be moulded by God-given ethics, which is one of the principles of the line of prophethood concerning individual life, there is the instruction: “Be distinguished by God-given morals and turn towards God Almighty with humility recognizing your impotence, poverty, and defectiveness, and so be a slave in His presence.” Whereas, the self-seeking rule of philosophy, “Try to imitate the Necessarily Existent One” is mankind’s aim for perfection. No, indeed, the essence of humanity has been kneaded with infinite impotence, weakness, poverty, and need, while the essence of the Necessarily Existent One is infinitely omnipotent, powerful, self-sufficient, and without need.

To be moulded by God-given ethics will, if the ‘I’ is in the ‘line of prophethood’, see the soul acknowledge its existential impotence and, by abnegating all claims to perfection and, by so doing, act as a conscious mirror to the attributes of God but without appropriating them as its own. For the ‘I’ which is in the ‘line of philosophy’, however, the attributes of perfection which it finds as part of its creational make-up are treated not as things reflected, and thus on loan, but as things which are foundational and which can be improved upon and perfected. The truth, as Nursi points out, is that the notion of self-perfection is ultimately a self-defeating one, since man is characterised creationally by his absolute impotence. A corollary of the erroneous ascription to the self of attributes of perfection is the notion that once such attributes have been established as foundational, they may be utilised in any manner that their owners wish. As Nursi writes: Among the principles of the line of prophethood concerning social life are those of mutual assistance, magnanimity, and generosity. These have been harnessed for the help

189

The Qur’an Revealed  and assistance of all things from the sun and moon down to even plants, or for the assistance of animals, for example, and the help of animals for human beings, and even that of particles of food for the cells of the body. Among the principles of the line of philosophy concerning social life, however, is that of conflict, which springs from the misuse of their inborn dispositions by a number of tyrants, brutish men and savage beasts. Indeed, they have accepted this principle at so fundamental a level and at such a general one that they have idiotically declared: “Life is a conflict.”

For the ‘I’ which is in the ‘line of prophethood’, attributes are given on loan for purposes dictated by, and known best to, their true Owner; since they are on loan, they cannot be used as the recipient of the loan determines. When attributes are recognised for what they are – namely reflections of their true Owner – they will be used in a manner dictated by Divine will and the common good. However, when they are misappropriated by an ‘I’ which is in the ‘line of philosophy’, these attributes tend to be utilised for purposes other than that for which they were originally intended. Power, for example, when expressed by an ‘I’ that is in the ‘line of prophethood’, will be tempered by compassion and used for the good of all other beings; when brandished by an ‘I’ that is in the ‘line of philosophy’, on the other hand, power will be seen as a personal asset that is to be used in any way the apparent owner of power dictates. Man’s most basic existential dilemma, then, is to reconcile his love of perfection with the fact that he is absolutely impotent, and in need at all times of the One Who possesses all attributes of perfection at the level of the absolute. To fail in this endeavour is to fall from the ‘highest of the high’ – the default setting of man in his original creation – to the ‘lowest of the low’, thus reneging on the ‘Trust’ that posits man, created as he is in imago Dei, as being Divine vicegerent (khalīfa) on earth. Key to this endeavour is the correct understanding of the nature and role of the ‘human I’, arguably the central component of the human soul and the mechanism upon which man’s ultimate destiny rests.

190

Chapter Six Revelation and Prophethood

Introduction

That revelation (wah. y) and prophethood (nabuwwa) are linked inextricably is reflected in the decision to appraise Said Nursi’s treatment of them in the same chapter. He himself argues that revelation and prophethood are mutually supportive insofar as each serves as a proof of the other, and there are few passages in which the first is discussed entirely without reference to the second. However, despite the fact that they are in one sense two sides of the same coin, it is revelation that is foundational. And so while prophethood can never be discussed outside the context of revelation, from one particular perspective it is possible to talk about revelation without reference to prophethood. For one of the distinguishing features of Nursi’s theology is that every creative act of God is an act of revelation, and that the created realm as a whole is from all aspects revelatory in nature.1 In this chapter, we will explore Nursi’s understanding of revelation and prophethood as concepts only; discussion of issues such as the process and mechanisms of revelation, the diversity of revealed books and scriptures, the ‘prerequisites’ of prophethood and the nature or character of individual prophets is beyond the scope of our discussion here, although a brief overview of these will appear in Chapter Seven. Given the primordiality of revelation, then, it is to Nursi’s understanding of this concept that we turn first.

The necessity of revelation

As is the case with so many other Nursian conceptualisations of the realities of belief, it is arguably the ‘Hidden Treasure’ tradition which holds the key to his understanding of revelation in the widest sense of the word: I was a Treasure but was not known. So I loved to be known, and I created the creatures and made Myself known to them. Then they came to know Me.

191

The Qur’an Revealed  As we saw in Chapter Two, the manifestation of the Necessarily Existent One by means of the existence of beings ‘other-than-God’ has a dual purpose: not only does it make the created aware of the Creator, it also provides the ‘mirror’ in which God may ‘observe’ Himself. The created realm is a vast array of ‘mirrors’ – of created beings – in which created beings may observe that which has been reflected in themselves and others, and in which the Creator is able to observe the artistry of His own creative act as displayed by His attributes of perfection. It is a fundamental rule that infinitely perfect beauty and infinitely beautiful perfection want to behold themselves and show and exhibit themselves. In consequence of this, in order to make Himself and His perfections known, and to display His beauty and make Himself loved, the Pre-Eternal Inscriber of the mighty book of the universe makes known and loved the beauty of His perfection and perfection of His beauty with the universe and all its pages, lines and even letters and points, with the innumerable tongues of all beings from the most particular to the most universal.2

Here, the mirror analogy gives way to the idea of the cosmos as a ‘mighty book’, with the created beings that constitute the cosmos represented as its pages, lines, words, letters and points, all of which display the numberless Divine attributes of perfection and endless configurations of Divine names. Just as the existence of a Divine ‘author’ explains the existence of the book, the book too serves as an indicator of the attributes of its Author. A book, particularly one in each word of which a minute pen has inscribed another whole book, and in each letter of which a fine pen has traced a poem, cannot be without a writer; this would be entirely impossible. So too this cosmos cannot be without its inscriber; this is impossible to the utmost degree. For the cosmos is precisely such a book that each of its pages includes many other books, each of its words contains a book, and each of its letters contains a poem. The face of the earth is but a single page in the book of the cosmos. See how many books it contains. Every fruit is a letter, and every seed is a dot. In that dot is contained the index of the whole tree in its vastness. A book such as this can have been inscribed only by the mighty pen of a Possessor of Glory Who enjoys the attributes of splendour and beauty, and Who is the holder of infinite wisdom and power. Faith, then, follows inevitably on the observation of the world, unless one is drunk on misguidance.3

The cosmos, then, is ‘written’ in order to make known the attributes of the One who writes it, as Nursi elaborates: The mighty book of the universe both teaches us the creational signs concerning Divine existence and unity, and testifies to all the attributes of perfection, beauty and glory of that All-Glorious One. And they prove the perfection of the Divine Essence faultlessly and without defect. For it is obvious that perfection in a work points to the perfection of the act which is the source and origin of the work. And the perfection of the act points to the perfection of the name, and the perfection of the name to the perfection of the attribute, and the perfection of the attribute to the perfection of the essential qualities, and the perfection of the qualities points necessarily and self-evidently to the perfection of the essence possessing those qualities. 4

192

  Revelation and Prophethood The ‘mighty book of the universe’ is, then, a work of pure self-revelation on the part of God: the ‘words’ which make up the ‘mighty book of the universe’ are to be understood not as referring to themselves but, rather, as indicating the author of the book. As Nursi says, they are creational ‘signs’ (āyāt) which point to the attributes of perfection in the possession of that author. As ‘words’, then, created beings ‘speak’ of God, albeit with the tongue of mute eloquence. As such they are reflections of, inter alia, Divine speech (kalām), an attribute which, like life, power and will, is predicated of God essentially. Thus as well as being a concomitant of God’s desire to observe His own beauty, as it were, revelation is also necessitated by His being one who ‘speaks’ (mutakallim) of Himself to His creation.

Divine speech (kalām)

Nursi’s main contention so far, then, is that the existence of a Creator possessing all of the attributes of perfection absolutely will of necessity require revelation: it is unthinkable that such a Being would not ‘disclose’ its existence through the process that we understand as creation and the bringing into existence of that which is ‘other-than-God’ as a mirror in which to ‘observe’ Its own beauty. Up until this point, we have seen how Nursi sees the manifestation of the Divine names as the very foundation of Divine revelation (wah. y) in the widest sense of the term: the self-expression of God through the bestowal of existence on ‘creational signs’ which point to Him. Nursi’s depiction of the created realm as a vast book posits each of the entities within it as a ‘word’, proclaiming – through their reflection of the Divine attributes which pervade them – the book’s Author. However, while revelation is a consequence of the reflection of all of the Divine names, it is linked to the manifestation of the Divine attribute of speech (kalām) in particular. While the process of creation is, as we have seen, a form of Divine speech, it is a form that we may arguably class as non-vocal: the entities in the created realm are, indeed, as Nursi argues, the ‘words’ of God, but they are embodiments of ‘silent speech’, like the words written in any book. However, Divine speech is more than just the nonverbal communication of signs and symbols: it also has a verbal component, which speaks to man’s ability to hear words as well as read them. The notion of Divine speech was the subject of great speculation among medieval Muslim theologians, although – perhaps understandably – no definitive explanation of what is it actually means for God to speak has ever been forthcoming. Whether God’s speech as it inheres in Him essentially is speech that allows for sounds or not, and whether the Qur’an as the ‘word of God’ is created, uncreated or something ‘in between’, are not subjects that Nursi dwells on at any great length.5 What he does do is offer what he considers to be proofs of the reality of Divine speech by invoking the existence and interplay of other Divine attributes, as well as the existential requirements of created beings themselves. The truth of revelations prevails at all instants over all parts of the World of the Unseen with a most powerful manifestation. There comes with the truths of revelation and inspiration proceeding from the One All-Knowing of the Unseen a testimony to His existence and unity far stronger than the testimony of the universe and created beings. He does not leave Himself, His existence and His unity only to the testimony

193

The Qur’an Revealed  of His creatures. Rather, He speaks with a pre-eternal Speech consonant with His own being. The Speech of the One Who is all-present and all-seeing everywhere with His Knowledge and Power is also endless, and just as the meaning of His Speech makes Him known, so does His discourse make Himself known together with His attributes.6

Confirming here that creation itself is evidence of God’s creational artistry, Nursi admits that the cosmos and the entities which comprise it are not sufficient to provide man with all that he needs to know about his Creator. A far more compelling indication of Divine existence and unity is God’s own speech, which allows for self-expression in a much more direct and concise manner than is possible through the ‘mute eloquence’ of created beings. A God Who sees and hears all, and Who is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent must, Nursi contends, also be possessed of speech that is pre- and post-eternal: each of the attributes demands the existence of the others. The attribute of Speech, an essential concomitant and luminous manifestation of both Knowledge and Life, will necessarily be found in a comprehensive and eternal form in the being Whose Knowledge is comprehensive and Whose Life is eternal.7

Furthermore, he argues, a Creator who endows His creatures with the ability to speak must of necessity possess that ability Himself. The One Who, in order to make Himself known, fills the cosmos with His miraculous creations and endows them with tongues speaking of His perfections, will necessarily make Himself known with His own words also.8

Yet while God reveals Himself with His own words, the Quranic verseThere is nothing whatever like unto Him 9 confirms that Divine speech is essentially transcendent and, unlike human speech, does not depend on physical means for its articulation. Nevertheless, God’s words are manifested in the temporal, corporeal world in a manner amenable to human understanding. For God to speak in accordance with men’s intellects and understandings is known as ‘Divine condescension to the minds of men’. It is a requirement of God’s dominicality that He endow all of his conscious creatures with speech, understand their speech, and then participate in it with His own speech.10

Divine ‘condescension’ here means that God’s speech is communicated to man not only in a form that he can understand – namely in words that are audible and meaningful – but also in a manner which is accessible to every individual on his or her own level of understanding. The spirit of the messages may well be Divine and thus eternal, but their form – the letters, words and sounds – of the message is clearly created and firmly of this world. It must be so because, as Nursi says, it is a requirement of Divine dominicality that the recipient of the message understand the One who sends it. Divine speech may be transcendent at source, but when communicated to the created realm, it takes on a form appropriate to that realm. Divine speech is also a concomitant of the fact that man – God’s addressee par excellence – was created in abject existential poverty.

194

  Revelation and Prophethood It is a consequence of Divinity that the Being Who endows men with impotence and desire, poverty and need, anxiety for the future, love and worship, should communicate His own existence, by way of His speech, to His most loved and lovable, His most anxious and needy creatures, who are most desirous of finding their Lord and Master. 11

The fact that man is endowed with the ability to understand speech, together with his need to discover the ultimate meaning of his own existence, constitute proof enough, Nursi contends, that the One Who created man in such a manner must also be possessed of the wherewithal to satisfy that need by responding to it through the medium of the spoken word.

The ubiquity of Divine speech

Divine communication – be it in the non-verbal form of self-expression through the medium of creation or in the form of the spoken word – pervades the cosmos, Nursi tells us; God’s words, he contends, are endless. In his discourse on the ubiquity of Divine speech – and, by extension, of revelation – Nursi adduces the Quranic verse Say: “If the ocean were ink (wherewith to write out) the words of my Lord, sooner would the ocean be exhausted than would the words of my Lord, even if we added another ocean like it, for its aid.” 12 in support of his argument that the ‘words of God’ are both pre- and post-eternal: Firstly, in respect of being a divine attribute like knowledge and power, pre-eternal speech is infinite. Certainly, if the seas were ink for something infinite, they would never get to the end of them. Secondly, speech is the clearest and most powerful thing that makes known someone’s existence. Hearing someone’s speech proves that he exists as clearly as a thousand proofs, indeed, as clearly as seeing him. Thus through its allusive meaning, this verse says: “If the seas were ink to the extent of divine speech, which demonstrates the All-Glorious Sustainer’s existence, and the trees were pens, and they were to write His speech, they would never come to the end of them. That is to say, just as any speech points to its own extent and at the degree of witnessing to the existence of the one who spoke it, so the extent that the above speech points to and tells of the One who spoke it – the Single and Eternally Besought One – is beyond measure, so that if all the seas were ink they would still be insufficient for writing it.” 13

The Quran would appear to be quite clear on the issue: if all the oceans were ink, and that ink were used to write down the words of God, the ink would run out before the task could be completed. Indeed, the task would an impossible one, for the words of God are neverending, and however much ink were available, one would never be able to record them all. But what does it mean to say that Divine speech is ‘infinite’? While a detailed discussion of the nature and paradoxes of infinity is beyond the scope of this chapter – and, indeed, this book – this place is as good as any to clarify precisely what we mean when we predicate infinity of anything pertaining to God. The word used by Nursi to describe the words of God is lā mutanāhī ; the usual translation is ‘infinite’, although one also comes across renderings such as ‘boundless’ and ‘without end’. Each of God’s attributes, as well as God Himself, is often described as ‘infinite’,

195

The Qur’an Revealed  but usually without much thought for what the term actually denotes. Infinity, a concept that is for the most part the domain of mathematics and physics, is used to describe a quantity of things that has no end or upper limit – or, to be more precise, a quantity of things whose end or upper limit cannot be imagined. Yet can an actual infinity occur, either in the created realm or, indeed, in the realm of the absolute unseen, or the Divine essence itself? Be it for mathematicians, physicists, philosophers or theologians, the notion of infinity is a hotly contested one, with no consensus as to whether an actual infinity can ever occur except as an abstract concept. Aristotle was allegedly the first person to make a distinction between potential and actual infinities. An example of a potential infinity is the sequence of numbers 1,2,3 and so on: the sequence is potentially endless because we are able to carry on adding numbers to it with no conceivable limit. With respect to division, too, we can speak of a potentially infinite series. For example, the number one can be divided without end in a series that runs 1, 0.5, 0.25 and so on: division may be carried out continuously without ever reaching zero, thus producing a potentially endless sequence of infinitesimals. An actual infinity, on the other hand, is one in which all the members of the sequence are simultaneously co-existent in a set or totality – a notion which Aristotle, among others, dismisses as paradoxical. There is general consensus that an actual infinity cannot exist out there in the ‘real world’ – in the realm of created beings – and that if it exists at all, it does so only in the realm of mathematics, which is the realm of thought only. If infinities exist in the ‘real world’, they can, it is believed, be potential infinities only, which progress ever onwards towards infinity, but never actually reach it. Where, then, does this leave the descriptions we read of God’s attributes – and, in this particular case, His words – as being ‘infinite’ ? Given that God is held to be transcendent and utterly unlike any created entity, to speculate on whether the infinity predicated of His attributes is ‘actual’ or ‘potential’ is surely invalid: the ‘actual-potential’ distinction is, after all, one that pertains to time and change, and therefore can yield no meaning when applied to something that does not have temporality.14 For to describe anything pertaining to God as ‘potentially infinite’ would imply change, addition and growth on His part, which is theologically inadmissible. Similarly, to describe any attribute of His as ‘actually infinite’ would suggest something that is a completed totality – a highly problematic notion given that the very idea of a completed infinity is inherently incoherent.15 More importantly, ‘infinity’ is at heart a purely mathematical concept, and while it may serve as convenient conceptual shorthand with which to describe the indescribable, ultimately its coherence – and therefore its usefulness – has to be subjected to critical scrutiny. Given this, it is the contention of the writer that the term ‘infinite’ when predicated of God, or of anything pertaining to Him, such as His attributes or names, is ultimately meaningless, and that if Nursi uses such terms, it is merely by way of ‘linguistic condescension’ or ‘speaking to the mind of man in a way that the mind of man is able to understand’, in exactly the same was that God ‘condescends’ to the human intellect when ‘speaking’ to it. To describe God’s speech as infinite should therefore not be understood as implying that God’s words form a ‘completed set’ of endless words – itself a contradiction in terms, as noted earlier. Taking his cue from the Quran, what Nursi is implying is that God’s speech is preand post-eternal; being beyond time and space, it is therefore unlike human speech, beyond

196

  Revelation and Prophethood computation and thus above being described in terms which pertain to that which is ‘otherthan-God’, such as infinite – be it actual or potential. However, since the human mind is unable to comprehend with complete clarity that which is strictly speaking beyond human understanding, the Quran ‘condescends’ by using terms that are approximations only. Nursi, one may argue, is doing the same here. Nursi then confirms that to which he has alluded throughout his discourse on Divine speech: God’s words are both verbal and non-verbal, consisting in both the spoken and the silent. Just as the divine attribute of speech has words, so does power have embodied words, and knowledge too has wise words of divine determining; these consist of all beings. Living beings, and small creatures in particular, are each dominical words which point to the Pre-Eternal Speaker in a way more powerfully than speech. If the seas were ink they could never come to the end of them. That is, the verse looks to this meaning too in allusive fashion.16

While the spoken words of God are, by his own admission, the most direct way of making known the Creator, Nursi here appears to accord equal status to what he calls the ‘dominical words’ of God – those created entities which possess life, and which from at least one perspective provide an even more powerful testimony to the attributes of God than does the spoken word alone. That these beings are described as entities whose end cannot be imagined is again a reflection of the fact that they are, as embodied words, manifestations of God’s attributes of perfection, which are transcendent, absolute and ultimately beyond human imagination, both in nature and extent.

Divine speech and inspiration

We have already alluded to the distinction that Nursi draws implicitly between the revelation which is God’s self-expression through creation and the revelation which comes in the form of messages communicated by God through the medium of the spoken word to certain chosen individuals from among the righteous. We must now make that distinction explicit by suggesting that the Arabic word wah. y – which is the only word that Nursi uses to denote revelation – be interpreted as admitting of two forms: general revelation, which is the ‘silent speech’ of God as manifested in the created realm; and particularised revelation, which refers to the spoken word of God as vouchsafed to a pious elite. Apart from general and particularised revelation, however, there is another form of Divine communication that takes place through the medium of God’s spoken word, and that is inspiration (ilhām). As Nursi shows, inspiration is also general, and is not confined to an elite group of recipients: All the inspiration received by angels and men, and even by animals, is divine speech of a sort. Its words are certainly infinite. It means that the verse is telling us how numerous and infinite are the inspirations and words of divine command which the innumerable cohorts of absolute sovereignty continually receive.17

197

The Qur’an Revealed  Particularised revelation, Nursi says, is much higher than inspiration and is generally mediated by the angels, while inspiration usually comes directly. He likens God in this sense to a king who uses two modes of speech and command: The first consists of his sending to a governor a lieutenant equipped with all the pomp of monarchy and the splendour of sovereignty. Sometimes, in order to demonstrate the splendour of his sovereignty and the importance of his command, he may meet with the intermediary, and then the decree will be issued. The second consists of his speaking privately in his own person, not with the title of monarch or in the name of kingship, concerning some private matter, some petty affair, using for this purpose a trusted servant, some ordinary subject, or his private telephone. In the same way the Pre-Eternal Monarch may either, in the name of the Sustainer of All the Worlds, and with the title of Creator of the Universe, speak with revelation or the comprehensive inspiration that performs the function of revelation, or He may speak in a different and private fashion, as the Sustainer and Creator of all animate beings, from behind the veil, in a way suited to the recipient.18

Particularised revelation is also different in that it is directed only at certain chosen individuals; inspiration, on the other hand, is in one way or another directed at all living beings. Revelation is without shadow, pure and reserved for the elect. Inspiration, by contrast, has shadow: colours intermingle with it, and it is general. There are numerous different kinds of inspiration, such as the inspiration of angels, the inspiration of men, and the inspiration of animals; inspiration thus forms a field for the multiplication of God’s words, which are as numerous as the drops in the ocean.19 All inspirations, from the inspirations of bees and animals to those of ordinary people and the elite among men, and from the inspirations of ordinary angels to those of the sublime cherubim, are divine words of a sort. But they are dominical speech in conformity with the capacity of the places of manifestation and their stations; they are the varying manifestations of dominical address shining through seventy thousand veils.20

God thus speaks to all creatures who are capable of hearing His words, but in a manner that is consistent with their existential situations and spiritual stations. That which biologists identify as ‘instinct’ in animals is attributed to Divine inspiration by the Quran, as in the case of the bee, of which it makes mention explicitly. God’s words also reach human beings in diverse forms – through thoughts, ideas, dreams, epiphanies and veracious visions, the particular type and nature of the inspiration depending on the need, capacity and intention of the recipient. Particularised revelation (wah. y), however, is, as Nursi points out, reserved for the elite. These are the messengers (rusul) and prophets (anbiyā) of God, and it is to Nursi’s conceptualisation of propethood that we now look.

The necessity of prophethood

It is unthinkable, Nursi argues, that God would reveal himself through the mute eloquence of ‘creational signs’ without providing some form of instruction as to their meanings. These

198

  Revelation and Prophethood meanings are imparted to man in the form of the spoken ‘word of God’, communicated to them in a language that he is able to understand by teachers who, like him, are human. These teachers are the prophets, the existence of whom, Nursi says, is an indispensible requirement of revelation. Indeed, revelation necessitates prophethood, while prophethood is itself an indication of revelation. Is it at all possible and could reason accept that God, the True Object of Worship, should create the universe, in order to manifest His Godhead and fitness to be worshipped, as an embodied book, every page of which expresses a book of meanings and every line of which states a page of meanings… and as a magnificent mosque of His mercy, the inside of which is decorated with numberless inscriptions and adornments, and in every corner of which are species of beings each preoccupied with the worship dictated by its nature —is it at all possible He should create it in this way and not send masters to teach the meanings of that vast book, and commentators to expound its verses, and not appoint prayer-leaders to that huge mosque to lead all those worshipping in their myriad ways, and that He should not give decrees to those masters, commentators and leaders of worship? God forbid, a hundred thousand times! 21

The primary duty of the prophets, Nursi suggests here, is to teach man the meanings of the ‘creational signs’ which comprise the created realm. In other words, the vast ‘book of the universe’ cannot be understood properly unless it is read properly, and in one sense the prophets are sent to teach the people how to ‘read’ the signs, just as angels – who are also referred to as ‘messengers’ (rusul) – impart revelation to prophets and teach them how to pass on the message to others.22 But apart from teaching them how to ‘read’ the creation, as ‘envoys’ of God and as exemplars par excellence of Divine vicegerency, prophets are tasked with communicating the beauty of the Divine names to man in both word and deed. Also, is it at all possible that although the Maker loves His art and wants others to love it, and as is shown by His having taken into account the thousand pleasures of the mouth, wants it to be met with appreciation and approval, and has adorned the universe with priceless arts in a way that shows He wants through all His arts both to make Himself known and loved, and to display a sort of His transcendent beauty, is it at all possible that He should not speak to men, the commanders of living beings in the universe, through some of the most eminent of them, and send them as envoys, and that His fine arts should not be appreciated and the exquisite beauty of His Names not be valued, and His making Himself known and loved be unreciprocated? God forbid, a hundred thousand times!23

Prophethood is also necessitated by man’s inherent sense of worshipfulness and his concomitant need to know how to commune with God: Also, is it at all possible and could reason accept that the Most Compassionate and Munificent Maker Who, in order to display to conscious beings the beauty of His mercy and the goodness of His compassion and the perfection of His dominicality, and in order to encourage them to praise and thank Him, creates the universe as a banqueting hall, exhibition and place of excursion in which are displayed infinite varieties of delicious bounties and priceless, wondrous arts - is it at all possible that He should not speak with those conscious beings at the banquet and not inform them by means of envoys

199

The Qur’an Revealed  of their duties of thanks for the bounties, and their duties of worship in the face of the manifestations of His mercy and His making Himself loved? God forbid, a hundred thousand times!24

Prophethood is thus necessitated not only by the need for man to be able to ‘read’ and understand the creational signs among which he finds himself – and, indeed, of which he is one – but also by the need for him to know his essential duties as a human being. Nursi describes the universe as a vast showcase for Divine mercy, and concludes that in order for man to realise the kind of worshipfulness that he should nurture in himself in order to respond to this manifestation of Divine grace, the guidance of prophets is needed. Prophets are also needed, Nursi avers, on account of man’s sheer existential impotence. Given that man is created with numerous needs, and is subjected to countless trials and tribulations in his short earthly life, is it not unreasonable to think that his Creator would not reveal Himself through the medium of revelation in order to alleviate those pains and provide him with solutions to his problems? Also, is it at all possible or reasonable that the All-Knowing Speaker Who answers clearly by act and deed through His infinite bounties and gifts, which indicate intention, choice and will, at exactly the right time, all the supplications of living beings for their natural needs, and their desires and recourse through the tongue of disposition, that He should speak by deed and by state with the most insignificant living creature and remedy its woes and heed its troubles with His bounties, and know its needs and meet them, then not meet with the spiritual leaders of men, who are the choicest result of the universe, vicegerents of the earth and the commanders of most of the creatures on the earth? Although He speaks with them and with all living beings, should He not speak with men verbally and send them scriptures, books and decrees? God forbid, innumerable times!25

Life as proof of necessity of prophethood

Finally, Nursi adduces the phenomenon of life (h. ayāt) as proof of the necessity of prophethood: Similarly, the innermost essence of life symbolically proves the pillar of belief in the prophets. For the cosmos was created for the sake of life, and life is in turn one of the supreme manifestations of the Living, Self-Subsistent and Eternal One. It is one of His most perfect designs, one of His most beauteous arts. Further, the eternal life of God shows itself only through the sending of messengers and the revelation of books. If there were no books or prophets, then eternal life would remain unknown. When a man speaks, he is recognized to be alive. Similarly, it is the prophets and revealed books that make manifest the words and decrees of the Being Who, from behind the world of the unseen that is veiled by the cosmos, speaks, talks and emits His commands and prohibitions. Just as the life existent in the cosmos bears decisive witness to the necessary existence of the Living and Eternal One, so too does it point to and indirectly confirm the pillars of belief in the sending of messengers and the revelation of scriptures, for these are the rays, the manifestations and the relations of that eternal life. 26

200

  Revelation and Prophethood The cosmos was created, Nursi argues, for the sake of life itself; without life, the existence of God, the giver of life, would remain unknown, and to remain ‘a hidden treasure’ is at odds with the very notion of God as Creator. The notion of eternal life – both the eternality of God and the everlasting life of man in the Hereafter – would remain hidden if the ‘silent speech’ of God as manifested in the cosmos were not complemented by His spoken words in the form of revelation to prophets from among men. Thus it is that Nursi adduces life as one of his key ‘proofs’ for the necessity of prophethood and messengers from God.

Conclusion

In Nursi’s view, then, revelation as ‘speaking’ or, more precisely, ‘communication’, is of two kinds: revelation through creation and revelation through the spoken word. Revelation as creation is a form of Divine self-expression in which the Creator conveys non-verbal information about Himself in the form of signs (āyāt), the number of which equals the number of created entities in the cosmos. In short, everything which exists is an indicator in some way of one or more of the Divine names or of their various configurations and permutations, all of which point to the Source of all being in His Unity. Wherever one looks, the Quran contends, there is the ‘face’ of God. The fact that He is said to be the ‘Outward’ as well as the ‘Inward’ confirms that existence itself, and all that is coloured by existence, constitutes an ever-changing yet constantly reliable store of non-verbal information about the Creator. Creation, then, is a form of Divine self-expression in which the Creator reveals Himself through His attributes of perfection which underpin the existence of all that is ‘other-thanGod’ – the entities which populate the cosmos, at the pinnacle of which, according to the Quran, stands man himself. This form of revelation is all-embracing yet, in one sense, indirect and opaque. The ‘words’ of the ‘vast book of the universe’ may all be there, but in order that they be understood and interpreted properly, their meanings have to be taught. While man may be able to understand some of the truths and realities of both human and Divine existence on his own steam, that is, through the use of his own ratiocinative powers, the limits of pure reason mean that true interpretation of the ‘creational signs’ must obtain via another medium. That medium is the spoken word. “Speech,” as Nursi says, “is the clearest and most powerful thing that makes known someone’s existence.” And while the recipients of revelation possess numerous faculties which are capable of responding to the non-verbal communication of the Divine, they also possess the ability to express themselves through language. Communication by the use of signs, symbols and facial expressions is indeed better than no communication at all, but the power to speak and to understand the spoken word is possibly the faculty par excellence through which man is able both to express himself and to understand others when they address him. It is to this faculty that revelation through the spoken word appeals. And revelation through the spoken word, while originating in the transcendent speech of the Divine, comes to man in the form of human speech, either through inspiration or through ‘messages’ vouchsafed to the elite among the righteous, the prophets and messengers of God. It is to Nursi’s appraisal of the person claimed to be the last of God’s prophets – Muhammad – and the message claimed to be the final direct communication from God – the Quran – that we now turn.

201

Chapter Seven The Quran and Muhammad Introduction

Muhammad and the Quran appear from one perspective to be inseparable: without Muhammad, there could arguably have been no Quran; without the Quran, which selfidentifies as the final written message of God to mankind, Muhammad would have had no mission, and certainly no locus as ‘seal of the prophets’ (khātam al-anbiyā). That prophethood and revelation are linked inextricably is evident, and it was for this reason that they were discussed together in the previous chapter. The link which ties the Quran to Muhammad also dictates, therefore, that they be treated together here. Further justification may be found in the fact that Nursi rarely discusses what is claimed to be God’s final revelation to mankind without mentioning the man who is claimed to be God’s final messenger. In the previous chapter we saw how Nursi claimed that revelation is a natural concomitant of Divine existence and is necessitated by the effulgence of the ‘beautiful Names’, which in a sense demand to be seen and appreciated: their manifestation in the form of the phenomena which comprise the cosmos is revelation, sans book and sans prophet. Revelation, therefore, is primordial, and can in one respect be spoken about without any reference to prophethood. At the same time, however, Nursi is quick to point out that God self-identifies as one who speaks to his creation not only in the language of mute eloquence – namely the existence of the cosmos itself – but also in the spoken language of men. And to speak in the language of men requires the existence of means of communication through which Divine discourse can be channelled. These means are the prophets. Revelation and prophethood are, then, linked inextricably, and provide the means whereby beings are made aware of the very Source of their being. The Islamic revelation teaches belief in a number of prophets, all of whom were tasked with the mission of communicating the truths and realities of Divine unity to man, and a small number of whom were recipients of particularised revelations in the form of written messages or ‘scriptures’. As far as the Quran is concerned, there is no palpable difference between the prophets as far as the core concept elucidated in their messages – namely obedience to one God and one God only – is concerned, even though their missions and approaches may be

203

The Qur’an Revealed  radically different. Nursi accounts for the diversity of prophets and the different styles of prophethood as follows: If you were to ask: The outlooks (masālik) of the prophets are all different and their ways of worship are diverse. What is the reason for this? You would be told: The prophets are all followed in the principles of faith and fundamental rules, for these are constant and fixed, unlike in secon­dary matters, the nature of which is to change in the course of time. Just as the four seasons and the stages in a person’s life warrant different remedies and clothing - what is a cure at one time may cause illness at another - so the stages of the life of humanity necessitate differences in rules of secon­dary importance, which are healing for spirits and nourishment for hearts. 1

The superiority of the Quran

The Quran, however, while being from one perspective merely a scripture among scriptures, is accorded superiority over other revelations on account not only of the elevated nature of its message but also because of the perfected nature of its chief recipient: Also, is it at all possible that the All-Wise Maker should cause his living and conscious creatures to speak with one another in all their myriad tongues, and that He should know their voices and what they say, and listen to them and clearly reply through His acts and bounties, but Himself not speak or not be able to speak? Is there any possibility or probability of this? Since self-evidently He speaks and the chief of those addressed by His speech, who comprehends it perfectly, is man; more certainly, foremost the Quran and all well-known holy scriptures are His speech.2

Moreover, Nursi argues for the superiority of the Quran qua revelation (wah. y) not only over other Divinely-revealed scriptures but also over other kinds of speech, such as inspiration (ilhām): If you want to understand the Quran’s superiority among all the Divine scriptures and its supremacy over all speech and writings, then consider the following. A king has two forms of speech, two forms of address. One is to speak on his private telephone with a common subject concerning some minor matter, some private need. The other, under the title of sublime sovereignty, supreme vicegerent and universal rulership, is to speak with an envoy or high official for the purpose of making known and promulgating his commands, to make an utterance through an elevated decree proclaiming his majesty. 3

The first form of speech in the example is an allusion to inspiration or ilhām, which is held to be universal: all human beings – indeed, all created beings – receive it more or less constantly, in various forms and under differing circumstances.4 The second form of speech is an allusion to revelation or wah. y, which is reserved for the elect group of human individuals chosen as prophets and messengers. Nursi shows the extent to which revelation is superior to inspiration with a mirror analogy: There are two men, each with a mirror in his hand. One man holds his mirror up to the sun. He receives light containing the seven colours according to the capacity of the

204

  The Quran and Muhammad mirror. He becomes connected to the sun through that relation and converses with it, and if he directs the light-filled mirror towards his dark house or his garden covered by a roof, he will benefit, not in relation to the sun’s value, but in accordance with the capacity of the mirror. The other man, however, opens up broad windows out of his house or out of the roof over his garden. He opens up ways to the sun in the sky. He converses with the perpetual light of the actual sun and speaks with it, and says in gratitude through the tongue of his disposition: “O you beauty of the world who gilds the face of the earth with your light and makes the faces of the flowers smile! O beauty of the skies, fine sun! You have furnished my little house and garden with light and heat the same as you have them.” Whereas the man with the mirror cannot say that. The reflection and works of the sun under that restriction are limited; they are in accordance with the restriction. Look at the Quran through the telescope of these two comparisons and see its miraculousness and understand its sacredness.5

According to the Quran, If all the trees on the land were to become pens and all the seas ink, and if they were to write the words of Almighty God, they would never come to the end of them.6 Ultimately, inspiration is no less a form of Divine communication than revelation, and if God’s words are numberless, as the Quran appears to suggest, then why should the Quran be privileged over other, apparently less exalted forms of Divine speech? Nursi responds by invoking the notion of the levels which exist in the manifestation of the Divine Names: The reason the Quran has been given the highest rank among the infinite words of God is this: the Quran has come from the Greatest Divine Name and from the greatest level of every Name. It is God’s Word in respect of His being Sustainer of All the Worlds; it is His decree through His title of God of All Beings; an address in regard to His being Creator of the Heavens and the Earth; a conversation in regard to absolute dominicality; a preeternal address on account of universal Divine sovereignty; a note-book of the favours of the Most Merciful One from the point of view of His all-embracing, comprehensive mercy; a collection of communications at the beginnings of which are sometimes ciphers related to the sublime majesty of the Godhead; a wisdom-scattering holy scripture which, descending from the reaches of the Greatest Name, looks to and inspects the all-comprehensive domain of the Supreme Throne. It is for these reasons that the title of Word of God has been given with complete worthiness to the Quran.7

Divine words other than those which comprise the Quran are, says Nursi, speech which has been vocalised through the partial manifestation of a particular Name, or through a particularised instance of dominicality or mercy. In other words, there is a gradation in the manifestation of the Divine attribute of speech which allows for distinctions to be drawn between the various levels at which God reveals Himself to His creatures through the medium of the spoken word. ‘Most inspiration’, Nursi says, ‘is of this sort, but its degrees vary greatly.’ 8 For example, the most particular and simple is the inspiration of the animals. Then there is the inspiration of the ordinary people; then the inspiration of ordinary angels; then the inspiration of the saints, then the inspiration of the higher angels. Thus it is for this reason that a saint who offers supplications directly without means by the telephone of the heart says: “My heart tells me news of my Sustainer.” He does not say, “It tells me

205

The Qur’an Revealed  of the Sustainer of All the Worlds.” And he says: “My heart is the mirror, the throne, of my Sustainer.” He does not say, “It is the throne of the Sustainer of All the Worlds.” For he can manifest the address to the extent of its capacity and to the degree nearly seventy thousand veils have been raised. Thus, however much higher and more elevated is the decree of a king promulgated in respect of his supreme sovereignty than the insignificant speech of a common man, and however much more abundantly the effulgence of the sun in the sky may be benefited from than the manifestation of its reflection in the mirror, and however greater is its superiority, to that degree the Quran of Mighty Stature is superior to all other speech and all other books.9

Divine speech, then, like all other Divine attributes, manifests itself in degrees, thus accounting for the simple, most particularised inspiration which comes to animals as well as the revelation vouchsafed to the prophets, and in particular to Muhammad, which represents the most elevated degree of Divine communication to mankind. The Quran, then, is the most comprehensive manifestation of Divine speech. If, for Christians, Christ is the word of God made flesh, one may argue that for Muslims, the Quran is the word of God made literary miracle. As for the other Divinely-revealed scriptures, Nursi is of the opinion that each is as perfect as its position in the hierarchy of manifested degrees of Divine speech allows, but that clearly none of them is able to attain the elevated status of the Quran: After the Quran, at the second level, the Holy Books and Revealed Scriptures have superiority according to their degree. They have their share from the mystery of that superiority. If all the fine words of all men and jinn which do not issue from the Quran were to be gathered together, they still could not attain to the sacred rank of the Quran and imitate it. 10

Nursi’s definition of the Quran

Nursi’s understanding of the superiority of the Quran as God’s revelation to man par excellence can also be discerned quite clearly from the seminal definition he gives of it in the Twenty Fifth Word : The Quran is the pre-eternal translator of the mighty Book of the Universe; the posteternal interpreter of the various tongues reciting the verses of creation; the commentator of the book of the Worlds of the Seen and the Unseen; the revealer of the treasuries of the Divine Names hidden in the heavens and on the earth; the key to the truths concealed beneath the lines of events; the tongue of the Unseen World in the Manifest World; the treasury of the post-eternal favours of the Most Merciful and of the pre-eternal addresses of the Most Holy, which come from the World of the Unseen beyond the veil of this Manifest World; it is the sun, foundation and plan of the spiritual world of Islam; the sacred map of the worlds of the hereafter; the expounding word, lucid exposition, decisive proof and clear interpreter of the Divine Essence, attributes, Names and functions; it is the instructor of the world of humanity; the light and water of Islam, the macroanthropos; the true wisdom of mankind; and the true guide and leader urging humanity to prosperity and happiness; it is a both a book of law and a book of prayer; a book of wisdom and a book of worship; a book of command and summons, a book of invocation and a book of

206

  The Quran and Muhammad thought; a unique, comprehensive sacred book comprising many books to which recourse may be had for all the needs of all mankind; it is a revealed scripture resembling a sacred library which offers treatises suitable for all the various ways and different paths of the all the saints and the veracious ones and the wise and the learned, which is appropriate for the illuminations of each way and enlightens it, and is suitable for the course of each path and depicts it.11

For Nursi, then, the Quran is the hermeneutical key which unlocks the vast ‘book of the Universe’ and makes it readable. It does so, he contends, by uncovering the treasuries of the Divine names and attributes, which are like so many pillars holding up the whole edifice of creation, and which point to the existence in unity of its Creator. Moreover, in revealing the true nature of existence, and the Ground of all being, it also instructs man, who is the chief addressee of the Divine discourse, in his objectives and imperatives: it throws light not only on the nature of the Divine but also upon the nature of man, who is drawn inexorably towards the Divine on account of his innate impotence. With regard to past scriptures, Nursi describes the Quran as a revealed message which contains in summary the books of all the past prophets and saints, who were operating in very different times and under very different socio-cultural circumstances.12 While the Quran is seen as superior from one perspective, Nursi says that it does not nullify what has come before it; indeed, it has been sent to complete and complement the scriptures revealed previously, and, as such, should not be difficult for those of other traditions to accept: [The Quran urges] the People of the Book to believe [in Islam], for it makes it appear familiar to them, and easy. It is as though [the Quran] is saying: ‘O People of the Book! You should not experience any difficulty in entering this [new] way, for you are not casting away your outer shell altogether, but only completing your beliefs and building on the fundamentals you already possess.’ For the Quran does not bring any new fundamentals or principal beliefs; it modifies and perfects existent ones; and it combines in itself the virtues of all the previous books and the essentials of all the previous laws. It only establishes new ordi­nances in secondary matters, which are subject to change due to differences in time and place. For just as with the change of seasons, food and dress and many other things are changed, so too the stages of a person’s life war­rant changes in the manner of their education and upbringing. Similarly, as necessitated by wisdom and need, religious ordinances concerning secon­dary matters change in accordance with the stages of mankind’s develop­ment. For very many of these are beneficial at one time yet harmful at another, and very many medicines were efficacious in mankind’s infancy yet ceased being remedies in its youth. 13

The ‘Quran of miraculous exposition’ as the word of God

Nursi’s attempt to show that what he calls ‘the Quran of miraculous exposition’ has its source in the Divine and that the production of such a work is beyond the power of human beings – Muhammad in particular – is seen to best effect in the Twenty-Fifth Word, a treatise in which he purports to expound forty ‘proofs’ of the Quran’s authenticity as the directly revealed word of God. The treatise is divided into three main sections or ‘lights’, each of which is divided further into subsections, entitled variously as ‘radiances’, ‘gleams’, ‘glistens’

207

The Qur’an Revealed  and ‘beams’ and dealing with a wide range of subthemes. These light tropes are, of course, in keeping not only with the title of Nursi’s magnum opus, but also with the notion, central to Nursi’s approach to the Quran, of the Islamic revelation as a source of psycho-spiritual enlightenment. The two main pillars upon which Nursian discourse on the Quran rests, and which account for the lion’s share of the Twenty-Fifth Word, are the perceived eloquence (balāgha) of the Divine revelation and what Nursi describes as its innate comprehensiveness (jāmi‘iyya), both of which are claimed to be at the level of inimitability or i‘jāz.14 Derived from the Arabic triliteral root ‘a -j –z (‘to be unable’, ‘to be incapable’), the word i‘jāz signifies the perceived inability of any human mind to create a literary work which is able to match the Quran in terms of, inter alia, its eloquence and comprehensiveness, while simultaneously alluding to its perceived miraculousness. The Arabic verbal noun mu‘jiza, derived from the same root as i‘jāz, and translated traditionally as ‘miracle’, denotes anything which is incapable of being imitated, and which leaves those who witness it in no doubt that not only is the thing in question ‘out of the ordinary’ but also totally beyond the capacity of any human being to bring into effect. The evidentiary miracles (mu‘jizāt) effected through the medium of the prophets in the Quran fall into this category, while the Quran itself is held to be the example par excellence of a mu‘jiza – thanks primarily to its i‘jāz or inimitability. Before we explore Nursi’s Twenty-Fifth Word in greater detail, let us first see how Nursi explains why Muhammad’s most compelling evidentiary miracle came in the form that it did, namely as an inimitably eloquent text possessed of qualities so elevated that it could not be equalled by any literary work of human provenance. At the time of Moses, it was magic that was prevalent, so his most important miracles resembled it. And at Jesus’s time, it was medicine that was prevalent and his miracles were mostly of that kind. Similarly, at the time of the Most Noble Messenger (PBWH), in the Arabian Peninsula the following things were highly prized: eloquence and rhetoric; poetry and oratory; soothsaying and divining matters of the unseen; and knowledge of past events and cosmology. Thus when the Quran of Miraculous Exposition appeared, it challenged those whose knowledge lay in these four main fields.15

What was the nature of these challenges that the Quran posed to the henotheists of seventh-century Arabia and how were they met? Firstly, Nursi says, the Quran made those who were au fait with rhetoric and literary eloquence “bow before it” and listen with amazement to its verses. Secondly, it made those who were versed in oratory and the poetic arts “bite their fingers in astonishment”, causing them to question their own artistic expertise and “remove the famous Seven Hanging Poems, their pride and glory, from the walls of the Ka‘ba.” 16 As for the soothsayers and sorcerers, Nursi says, the fact that the Quran spoke of future events put their claims to supernatural prescience and clairvoyance in the shade, while others were saved from superstition and falsehood concerning past events by the Quran’s emphasis on facts and sound knowledge.17 On all four counts, Nursi contends, the sceptics were forced to acknowledge the veracity and authenticity of the Quran, with many eventually becoming its students. Furthermore, even those who refused to bow down to it were unable to rise to the challenge posed

208

  The Quran and Muhammad by the Quran itself on a number of occasions, namely that they produce something of similar quality: Or do they say, “He forged it”? Say: “Bring then a Sura like unto it, and call (to your aid) anyone you can besides Allah, if it be ye speak the truth!” 18

As Nursi points out, there are two main schools of thought with regard to the challenge posed by the Quran: The prevailing and preferred school states that the subtle qualities of eloquence and meaning in the Quran are beyond human power. The second and less preferred school states that while it is within human ability to dispute one of the Quran’s chapters, Almighty God has prevented this as a miracle of Muhammad (PBWH). For example, if a man tries to rise to his feet and a prophet tells him that he cannot and he is unable to, then this is a miracle. This school of thought is known as the s.arfa (dissuasion) school. That is, Almighty God prevented men and jinn from successfully disputing a single chapter of the Quran. According to this school, scholars who state that a single word of the Quran cannot be disputed are correct. Because since on account of its miraculousness Almighty God prevented them, they could not so much as open their mouths to dispute it. And even if they had done so, they could not have uttered a word.19

Arab rhetoricians held numerous different opinions with regard to the issue of i‘jāz and the Quranic challenge connected with it. The school of thought referred to by Nursi as being the “less preferred” of the two he mentions is founded on the notion of ‘dissuasion’ or s.arfa, a term first used by the Mu ‘tazilite theologian Wās.il b. ‘At. ā (d. 748). Proponents of s.arfa hold that while the Arabs actually possess the rhetorical wherewithal to meet the Quranic challenge, God has dissuaded them from rising to it by ‘averting their hearts’.20 The more prevalent of the two schools, Nursi says, is the one which holds that the Quranic genre and its stylistic techniques are totally distinct from anything which can be found in the oral and written discourses of human beings such as poetry, prose or oratory. And so even though the Arabs of the time possessed extremely high levels of linguistic and rhetorical competence, the production of anything with even a semblance of similarity to the Quran was beyond their capability. If it had been possible to rise to the Quranic challenge, Nursi says, it would most certainly have been attempted. For it was a question of honour and pride, and life and property were at risk. If it had been attempted, numerous people would have supported such an attempt. For those who obstinately oppose the truth have always been many. And if many people had supported it, they surely would have found fame. For insignificant contests, even, attracted the wonder of people and found fame in stories and tales. So an extraordinary contest and event such as that would never have remained secret. The most ugly and infamous things against Islam have been passed down and become famous, but apart from one or two stories about Musaylima the Liar, no such thing has been related. Musaylima was very eloquent, but when compared with the exposition of the Quran, which possesses infinite beauty, his words passed into the chronicles as nonsense. Thus

209

The Qur’an Revealed  the miraculousness of the Quran’s eloquence is as certain as twice two equals four; and that is how it is. 21

The case of Musaylima ‘the Liar’ is possibly the most well-known but it is by no means the only one, for there are a number of references in the literature to individuals who attempted to rise to the challenge posed by the Quran.22 However, the consensus of opinion among Arab rhetoricians and litterateurs is that none of these attempts has ever stood up to serious scrutiny or been worthy of serious consideration. Given the choice between producing a piece of work comparable to a chapter from the Quran and taking up arms against the nascent Muslim community, Nursi says, the detractors of Muhammad and the Quran chose the second route, proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the Quranic challenge was impossible. If it had been possible to dispute [the Quran], surely someone would have attempted it, not least because their religion, their possessions, their lives and their families had been put into peril. If they had disputed it, they would have been saved. If it had been possible, they would definitely have contested it. And if they had done so, since those who wished to do this, the unbelievers and dissemblers were many, and truly many, they would certainly have supported such a contest and would have advertised it widely. Just as they spread everything that was against Islam. For twenty-three years the All-Wise Quran taunted and challenged them continuously in a way that would increase their obduracy. What it said, in effect, was this: “Let someone unlettered like Muhammad the Trustworthy compose the like of the Quran. You will see that this is impossible. In that case, find someone very learned and literary to do it. But you won’t be able to do that either, so rather than a single person, gather together all your scholars and men of eloquence, and let them assist one another; the false gods on which you rely can also lend a hand. You won’t be able to do this either, so use the literary works of the past, and even call on those of the future to help you, and then compose the like of the Quran. And if you can’t do this, don’t compose all of the Quran, but just ten chapters. And since you won’t be able to manage ten which are truly like the chapters of the Quran, concoct something out of stories and fictitious tales; just produce something similar to the Quran’s word-order and eloquence. And don’t write a long sūra, just a short one. But if you can’t do this, your religion, lives, property and families will all be in danger, both in this world and in the next!” 23

Thus, says Nursi, the Quran silenced its detractors not only for twenty-three years but for fourteen centuries. The unbelievers, unable to rise to the challenge, chose what is ostensibly the more difficult route, namely that of war. For Nursi, this is ample evidence of the fact that no-one was able to rise seriously to the Quranic challenge. Wouldn’t any intelligent person, particularly the people of Arabia at that time – and the Quraysh, who were very clever – have ensured that one of their literary men composed a sūra similar to one of the Quran’s and so be saved from its attacks? Would they have abandoned the short and easy way, cast all they possessed into peril, and travelled the way most fraught with difficulties? In short, as the famous Jāh.  iz.   put it: “Dispute with words was not possible, so they were compelled to fight with the sword.” 24

210

  The Quran and Muhammad

The Quran is ‘miraculous’ in different ways

While the miraculousness of the Quran is said to lie chiefly in its eloquence (balāgha), which is the aspect Nursi focuses on most, he is quick to assert that it is not only its elevated rhetorical qualities which attract the attention of its readers, many of whom, after all, do not have the particular expertise required to appreciate it as a work that is literarily inimitable. The All-Wise Quran has a different kind of miraculousness corresponding to the understanding of each class; it indicates the existence of its miraculousness to each in a different way. For example, to the scholars of rhetoric and eloquence, it exhibits the miraculousness of its extraordinary eloquence. To the poets and orators, it shows its exalted, beautiful and original style, which no one can imitate although it pleases everyone. The passing of time does not cause its style to age; it always remains fresh and new. Its prose and word-order are so well-ordered that it is both elevated and pleasant. To soothsayers and other diviners of the Unseen, it displays its miraculousness in its extraordinary reports concerning the Unseen. To historians, it demonstrates its miraculousness by giving information concerning events of past ages, as well as those of the future, and of the Intermediate Realm and the hereafter. To social and political scientists, it shows the miraculousness in its sacred principles. Yes, the Supreme Shari‘a, which proceeds from the Quran, indicates that mystery of miraculousness. To those occupied with knowledge of God and cosmic truths, it shows the miraculousness of the sacred divine truths in the Quran, or else it indicates the existence of that miraculousness. To the Sufis and saints, it shows the miraculousness in the hidden mysteries of its verses, which constantly rise and fall like waves in the sea of the Quran. And so on. To each of the forty classes of men, it opens up a window and shows its miraculousness. The ordinary people even, who only listen to the Quran understanding a little of its meaning, confirm that it does not resemble any other book. They say: “The Quran is either inferior to all the other books we have heard read, which not even an enemy could claim – just as it is impossible – or it is superior to all of them and is thus a miracle.” 25

Nursi contends that the Quranic challenge aroused passionate feelings in two kinds of people: in its friends and supporters, who, out of their love for the Quran, desired to write in a manner resembling it; and in its detractors, who wished to invalidate its claims by trying to compete with its style. As a result, Nursi says, countless books were written in Arabic, both by friend and foe, but none of them has been accepted by those who understand the literary dynamics of the Quran as resembling it in any way whatsoever.26 This, for Nursi, is proof either that the Quran is not at the same level as the books written about it, whether they have been designed to imitate it out of respect for its qualities or to better it out of contempt for its claims. If it is not on the same level as other books, he says, then it must be inferior to all of them – a claim, he contends, that not even Satan makes – or it must perforce be superior. As for the vast majority of Muslims who are not learned in the classical sense of the word, the inimitability of the Quran makes itself felt in other ways: Furthermore, the All-Wise Quran demonstrates its miraculousness before the uneducated mass of people, who do not understand its meaning, by not wearying them. Indeed, they

211

The Qur’an Revealed  say: “If I hear the finest and best known poems two or three times, I become bored of them. But the Quran never wearies me; the more I listen to it, even, the more it pleases me. It cannot therefore be written by man.” To children who try to memorize it, the All-Wise Quran shows its miraculousness by settling in their memories with the greatest of ease, despite their small, delicate, weak and simple heads being unable to retain for long a single page of other books, and many of the verses and phrases of that large Quran resembling one another, which should cause muddle and confusion. Even to the sick and the dying, who are disturbed by the slightest sound and noise, the murmuring sound of the Quran makes felt a sort of its miraculousness, by being as sweet and agreeable for them as Zamzam water. In short, the All-Wise Quran demonstrates its miraculousness to forty different classes and groups of people, or it indicates the existence of its miraculousness. It neglects no one. 27

The eloquence (balāgha) of the Quran

While Nursi talks of numerous ways in which the Quran is deemed to be miraculous, it is the language of revelation to which he devotes the lion’s share of his discourse on the book’s uniqueness. As indicated earlier, Nursi focuses on two main aspects: eloquence (balāgha) and conciseness (jāmi‘iyya). We begin our overview of his writings on the Quran here by looking at his discussion on eloquence. Nursi indicates five main areas in which the Quran demonstrates eloquence which is at the level of inimitability: in its word order (naz.  m); in its meaning (ma‘nā); in its literary style (uslūb); in its choice and use of words and letters (lafz.  ); and its manner of exposition (bayān).

Word order (naz.  m)

Nursi’s discourse on the different aspects of Quranic balāgha bears clear traces of the influence of, inter alios, the renowned Ash’arite theologian and grammarian, ‘Abd al-Qāhir ‘Abd al-Rah.  mān al-Jurjānī (d. 1078), who made a significant contribution to the development of the Arabic rhetorical sciences in general, and the theory of word order (naz.  m) in particular.28 Jurjānī’s word order theory deals with the grammar-governed word order system in Arabic and is a syntactically based approach with a distinctly rhetorical orientation. His theory investigates the various possible grammatical changes in the order of the component units of any given proposition. For Jurjānī, word order is closely connected to eloquence, effective style and facility of the communicative function which underpins the sentence or passage under scrutiny. In short, naz.  m denotes the various significations relayed by different syntactic structures and arrangements.29 What this means in practice, and particularly in the case of the Quran, as Nursi demonstrates, is that grammar can produce different meanings through different constructions of the same proposition, and that the one who produces the text is able to generate additional propositional meanings simply by changing the order in which the lexical items of the proposition appear. As far as Quranic word order is concerned, Nursi is at pains to show that the naz.  m in the Divine revelation is deliberate and highly purposeful, with semantic and pragmatic effects which are neither forced nor dysfunctional to the grammatical, morphological and semantic congruity of the text.

212

  The Quran and Muhammad In his Signs of Miraculousness, Nursi likens the eloquence and conciseness of the Quranic word order to the order that one sees in the movement of the hands of a clock: the relationships between the sentences and words of the Quran are like those of the second, minute and hour hands of a the clock, each one of which completes the order of the others. In the Twenty-Fifth Word, he elaborates on this with two extensive examples. The first concerns the verse And if [as much as] a whiff of the punishment of your Lord should touch them, they would surely say, “O woe to us! Indeed, we have been wrongdoers.” 30 In this sentence, the Quran wants to show how terrible the punishment is by pointing out the severity of the least amount. In other words, it expresses paucity, and all the parts of the sentence look to this paucity and reinforce it. For example, the words And if signify doubt, and doubt looks to littleness or paucity. The word touches here means to touch lightly, thus similarly expressing a small amount. The word nafah. a denotes a mere whiff, and is it in the singular form. Grammatically it is a mas.dar marra – a noun which expresses the doing of an action once only. Also its indefiniteness, indicated by the tanwīn,31 expresses littleness and means it is so insignificant that it can scarcely be known. The word of signifies division or a part; it means a bit and again indicates paucity. The Arabic word for punishment here points to a light sort of punishment compared with the chastisement that is nakal or the penalty that is i’qāb, and suggests a small amount. And by alluding to compassion and being used in place of the names Subduer, All-Compelling or Avenger, Sustainer indicates littleness or fewness. In short, it says that if the small amount of punishment suggested in all this paucity has such an effect, you can imagine how dreadful Divine chastisement would be. How perfectly, then, do the component parts of this sentence look to one another and assist one another! And each reinforces the aim of the whole! 32

Nursi’s second example of Quranic naz.  m concerns the verse Who believe in the Unseen, establish prayer and spend [in God’s way] out of what We have bestowed on them as sustenance.33

Nursi’s particular focus of attention in this verse is on the phrase and spend [in God’s way] out of what We have bestowed on them as sustenance, which in Arabic consists of four words only, wa mimmā razaqnāhum yunfiqūn. From his close reading of the phrase he draws the following conclusion: The parts of this sentence point out five of the conditions which make almsgiving acceptable. The first condition is that the giver of alms should not give so much that he will then be in need of receiving alms himself. It states this condition through the division or parts signified by out of (min) in the words out of what (mimmā, or min mā).34 The second condition is that the giver of alms should not take from Peter to pay Paul, but, rather, that he should give out of his own property. The words We have bestowed on them as sustenance (razaqnāhum) express this condition. It means, in other words, “Give (only) out of the sustenance that is yours.’ The third condition is that the giver of alms should not place any obligation on the recipient. The word We in We have bestowed on them as sustenance indicates this condition. In other words, “It is I who give you your sustenance, and when you give some of My property to one of My servants, you cannot place them

213

The Qur’an Revealed  under any obligation.” The fourth condition is that alms should be given to someone who will spend it on his livelihood; charitable giving to those who will squander it is not acceptable. The word spend (yunfiqūn) points to this condition. And the fifth condition is that alms should be given in God’s name. The words We bestow on them as sustenance indicates this, for it is saying “The property is Mine and therefore you should give it in My name.” From this text it is clear that one may add to these conditions, specifying what form the almsgiving should take and with what goods. For example, alms may be given in the form of learning and knowledge, or as words, acts or advice. The word what in out of what We have bestowed indicates these various other conditions on account of its generality. Furthermore, the whole sentence itself, on account of its absoluteness and generality, indicates these other conditions. Thus at least five conditions can be understood from a phrase which, in Arabic, is no longer than four words. This demonstrates that in the sentence as a whole, the word order has numerous different aspects.35

Nursi’s third and final example of the allegedly miraculous nature of Quranic word order is Sura 112 (al-Ikhlās.): Say: He is God, the One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him. This verse consists of four verses and contains six propositions. Three of these propositions are positive and three negative. The three positive propositions are: He is God; He is the One and Only; He is the Eternally Besought. The three negative propositions are: He begetteth not; He is not begotten; there is none like unto Him. Together, they prove six degrees of Divine Unity and at the same time refute six ways of associating partners with God. Each proposition is both the proof of the other proposition and the result. For each proposition has two meanings. Through one meaning it is the result, and through the other the proof. That is to say, within Sura 112 are thirty suras composed of proofs that demonstrate each another to be as well-ordered as the Sura itself. For example we may say that “He is God because He is One, and He is One because He is the Eternally Besought, and He is the Eternally Besought because He begets not and is not begotten, and He is all these things because there is none that is equal to Him.” Or we may say, “He is God and therefore He is One, and because He is One, He is Eternally Besought; and because He is Eternally Besought, He neither begets nor is begotten, and therefore there is none that is equal to Him.” 36

From six propositions, Nursi says, one can derive thirty different declarative sentences which indicate Divine Unity from thirty different perspectives, each of which he likens to a sūra in miniature. From the threads of the relationships which exist between the different verses of the Quran, one is able to create numerous intricate ‘word embroideries’ which, Nursi contends, are miraculous and beyond the capacity of any human author. What Nursi is at pains to demonstrate here, then, is that the deliberate juxtapositioning of different lexical items in the Quranic verses leads to eloquence, effective style and linguistic elegance that cannot be matched by any product of human literary endeavour. It is as though, he says, all of the Quran’s verses “have eyes that see most of the other verses

214

  The Quran and Muhammad and faces that look to them, so that each extends to the others the immaterial threads of relationship, each weaving a miraculous embroidery.” 37

Meaning (ma‘nī)

In the ninth and tenth centuries, literary critics and theologians alike – many of whom were Mu’tazilites – attempted to define precisely what it was that made the Quran superior to all other works. The ensuing discussions occurred roughly at the same time as debates among literary critics concerning how Arabic literature as a whole ought to be evaluated. One of the key issues in these debates was the ambiguity of the notions of meaning (ma‘nī) and expression or wording (lafz.  ). For those versed in logic, meaning was a logical idea that was signified by the expressions, while for the grammarians, meanings were seen as being more or less identical with the function of the words themselves. This ambiguity was not helped by the fact that some grammarians continued to use the word ma‘nī in the sense employed by the early exegetes, namely as a notion which indicates the intention of the speaker.38 Furthermore, the relative importance of lafz.   and ma‘nī was also considered to be a key issue in literary criticism, with the central question among Arab litterateurs being simply this: which of the two, lafz.   or ma‘nī, is more important in the poetic arts?39 For Nursi, it appears that ma‘nī denotes the conceptual meaning conveyed by the words or alfāz.   (pl. of lafz.  ), while the idea that one may be superior to the other has absolutely no locus in his evaluation of the Quran whatsoever, given that it cannot be described as literature – at least not in the traditional sense of the word – let alone as poetry. As Nursi’s conspectus of the Quran and its alleged miraculousness shows, no one feature of its perceived inimitability can be said to bear more weight than another: for him, all of its aspects are equally indicative of the fact that not only can the Quran be no more the product of the Prophet than the works of Shakespeare be the product of an illiterate Tudor peasant, but also that it ‘incapacitates’ humankind in general to the extent that only one Author can be found who is capable of producing such a work. There is a most wonderful eloquence in the meaning of the Quran. For example, if you want to understand the eloquence of the verse All that is in the heavens and on the earth extols and glorifies God, for He is the Tremendous, the Wise,40 imagine yourself in the Age of Ignorance in the deserts of barbarism before the Light of the Quran. Then, at a time when everything is swathed in the darkness of ignorance and heedlessness and enveloped in the lifeless veils of nature, you hear verses from the heavenly tongue of the Quran like: All that is in the heavens and on the earth extols and glorifies God, or,The heavens and the earth and all within them extol and glorify Him.41 Now look! See how the dead or sleeping creatures in the world are raised to life in the minds of listeners at the sound of extols and glorifies Him ; how they become conscious, and rise up and recite God’s Names. And how at the cry and light of extols and glorifies Him the stars, which had been lifeless lumps of fire in the black skies, all appear in the view of those who hear it as wisdom-displaying words in the mouth of the sky and truthpronouncing lights. The earth, too, rather than being a desolate wasteland, is seen to be a head with the land and sea as tongues, and animals and plants as words of glorification and praise. 42

215

The Qur’an Revealed  Here we see Nursi extolling the eloquence of Quranic meaning as a hermeneutical key which opens up what he presents as the hitherto locked doors of creation and, in the process, makes the book of the cosmos (kitāb-i kā’ināt) readable and meaningful. Thanks to the light of the Quran, Nursi is saying, a world once immersed in the darkness of ignorance is suddenly transformed into a domain of light: chaos gives way to order and futility is replaced by meaningfulness.

Style (uslūb)

For Nursi, the Quran’s style is at once strange (gharīb), original (badī‘), awe-inspiring (‘ajīb) and convincing (muqnī‘). It has imitated no-one, he says, and no-one has been able to imitate it: stylistically, it has always preserved the freshness and singularity it possessed when it was first revealed. Of the various examples of the Quran’s stylistic excellence that he gives, the ones below are representative of his general approach: For example, the words runs its course in And the sun runs its course to a place appointed 43 opens a window onto an elevated style as follows: with the words runs its course, that is, ‘the sun revolves,’ it puts in mind the Maker’s awesomeness by recalling the orderly disposals of Divine power in the alternations of winter and summer and day and night, and directs one’s gaze to the missives of the Eternally Besought One inscribed by the pen of power on the pages of the seasons. It proclaims the wisdom of the All-Glorious Creator. And with the word lamp in And set the sun as a lamp”,44 it opens a window onto the style like this: it makes one understand the Maker’s majesty and Creator’s bounty by recalling that the world is a palace and the things within it are adornments, food and necessities prepared for man and living creatures and that the sun is but a subservient candle. It demonstrates that the sun is an evidence of God’s unity, and that the idolators’ greatest, most brilliant object of worship is merely a subjugated lamp, an inanimate creature. That is to say, the word lamp calls to mind the Creator’s mercy within the grandeur of His dominicality; it recalls His favours within the breadth of His mercy, and in so doing informs of His munificence within the majesty of His sovereignty, thereby proclaiming Divine unity, and saying indirectly: “An inanimate and subservient lamp is in no way fit to be worshipped.” And with the word course in runs its course, it calls to mind the wondrous orderly disposals of Divine power in the revolutions of night and day and winter and summer, and in so doing makes known the grandeur of a single Maker’s power in His dominicality. That is to say, it turns man’s mind from the points of the sun and moon to the pages of night and day and winter and summer, and draws his attention to the lines of events written on those pages. For the Quran does not speak of the sun for the sake of the sun, but for the One Who illuminates it. Also, it does not speak of the sun’s nature, for which man has no need, but of the sun’s duty, which is that of mainspring for the order of dominical art, and centre of the order of dominical creativity, and a shuttle for the harmony and order of dominical art in the things the Pre-Eternal Inscriber weaves with the threads of day and night. You can compare others Quranic words with these. While all are simple, ordinary words, each performs the duty of a key to treasuries of subtle meanings.45

216

  The Quran and Muhammad The stylistic elegance of the Quran is, Nursi says here, not there for its own sake; rather, it has as its aim at all times the communication of certain conceptual meanings which are required if the knowledge of God – the objective par excellence of the Quran – is to be obtained. Similarly, mention of the sun, the moon or other natural phenomena is not made for its own sake, Nursi says, but for the sake of making known their Creator. Here we can see in the his approach to the Quran an implicit rejection of the trend towards ‘scientific exegesis’, which in certain scholarly quarters was gaining considerable momentum during Nursi’s time. When the Quran speaks of the sun, Nursi avers, it is not because it wishes to tell its readers about the sun’s nature; rather, it speaks about the sun in order to highlight the sun’s duty, and the fact that, like all other created beings, it depends for its coming into being, and for the continuation of its existence, on the power and mercy of God at all times. Style, then, is connected intimately with meaning, phrasing and word-order, and all are employed for the sake of human enlightenment. Nursi concludes: It is because the Quran’s style is for the greater part elevated and brilliant in the ways described above that on occasion Arab nomads were captivated by a single phrase, and without being Muslims would prostrate. One nomad prostrated on hearing the phrase Therefore proclaim openly what you are commanded.46 When asked “Have you become a Muslim?” he replied: “No. I am prostrating at the eloquence of these words.” 47

Wording or expression (lafz.  ) and use of letters

We have already discussed the tension which existed between meaning (ma‘nī) and expression (lafz.  ) in classical Arabic rhetoric on account of their definitional ambiguity, and the fact that one of the central debates among Arabic litterateurs hinged on which of the two is more important as far as Arabic poetics is concerned. For Nursi, as one might expect, comparative significance is not an issue, not least because the Quran is not classifiable as literature in the usual sense of the word. For Nursi, word-order, meaning, style and expression all contribute to what he believes is the matchlessness of the Quranic genre. With regard to lafz.  , that which Nursi is highlighting more than anything in the example given is the phonetic eloquence of the Quran’s various modes of expression. Just as the Quran is extraordinarily eloquent in regard to its style and manner of exposition, so is there a truly fluent eloquence in its wording, that is, in the words employed. Clear evidence of the existence of this eloquence is the fact that it does not bore or cause weariness; while the testimony of the brilliant scholars of the sciences of rhetoric forms a decisive proof of the wisdom of the eloquence. Yes, it does not weary even if repeated thousands of times; indeed, it gives pleasure. It is not burdensome for the memory of a small and simple child; children can memorize it easily. It is not unpleasant to the ear of those who are ill and usually pained by the slightest word. It is like sherbet to the palate of one in the throes of death. The recitation of the Quran gives sweet pleasure to the ear and mind of such a person just as Zamzam water gives pleasure to his mouth and palate. The reason that it does not cause boredom is this: it is food and sustenance for the heart, strength and wealth for the mind, water and light for the spirit, and the cure and remedy for the soul. Every day we eat bread, yet we do not tire of it. But if we were to eat the choicest fruit every day, it would cause boredom.

217

The Qur’an Revealed  That means it is because the Quran is truth and reality and truthfulness and guidance and wonderfully eloquent that it does not cause weariness and preserves its freshness and agreeableness as though preserving a perpetual youth. One of the Qurayshi leaders even, an expert orator, was sent by the idolators to listen to the Quran. He went and listened, then returned and said to them: “These words have such a sweetness and freshness that they do not resemble the words of men. I know the poets and soothsayers; these words do not resemble theirs. The best we can do is mislead our followers and say it is magic.” Thus, even the All-Wise Quran’s most obdurate enemies were amazed at its eloquence.48

Nursi then attempts to explain the sources of the Quran’s eloquence of wording and expression by deconstructing a single verse and demonstrating what he believes is the miraculousness present in the sounds, positioning and frequency of occurrence of the individual letters which comprise it. After (the excitement) of the distress, He sent down calm on a band of you overcome with slumber, while another band was stirred to anxiety by their own feelings, moved by wrong suspicions of Allah - suspicions due to ignorance. They said: “What affair is this of ours?” Say thou: “Indeed, this affair is wholly Allah’s.” They hide in their minds what they dare not reveal to thee. They say (to themselves): “If we had had anything to do with this affair, We should not have been in the slaughter here.” Say: “Even if you had remained in your homes, those for whom death was decreed would certainly have gone forth to the place of their death”; but (all this was) that Allah might test what is in your breasts and purge what is in your hearts. For Allah knoweth well the secrets of your hearts.49 In this verse, all the letters of the alphabet are present. But, see, although all the categories of emphatic letters are together, it has not spoilt the smoothness of style. Indeed, it has added a brilliance and a harmonious, congruent, eloquent melody issuing from varied strings. Also, note carefully the following flash of eloquence: of the letters of the alphabet, alif (‫ )ﺃ‬and yā (‫)ﻯ‬, since they are the lightest and have been transposed with one another like sisters, they have each been repeated twenty-one times. And since mīm (‫ )ﻡ‬and nūn (‫)ﻥ‬50 are sisters and have changed places, they have each been mentioned thirty-three times. And since shīn (‫)ﺵ‬, sīn (‫ )ﺱ‬and s.ād (‫ )ﺹ‬are sisters in regard to articulation, quality and sound, each has been mentioned three times. And although ‘ayn (‫ )ﻉ‬and ghayn (‫ )ﻍ‬are sisters, since ‘ayn (‫ )ﻉ‬is lighter, it is mentioned six times, while because ghayn (‫ )ﻍ‬is harsher, it is mentioned half as many, three times. And since zay (‫)ﺯ‬, dhāl (‫)ﺫ‬, z.  ā (‫ )ﻅ‬and . tā (‫ )ﻁ‬are sisters in regard to articulation, quality and sound, each is mentioned twice, while lām (‫ )ﻝ‬and alif (‫ )ﭐ‬in the form of lā (‫)ﻵ‬ have united and alif ’s share in the the form of lā is half that of lām, lām is mentioned forty-two times and as a half of it alif twenty-one times. Since hamza (‫ )ﺋ‬and hā (‫ )ﻫ‬are sisters in regard to articulation, hamza is mentioned thirteen times and being a degree lighter hā is mentioned fourteen times. And kāf (‫)ﻙ‬, fā (‫ )ﻑ‬and qāf (‫ )ﻕ‬are sisters; since qāf has an additional point, it is mentioned ten times, fā, nine times, kāf nine times, bā (‫ )ﺏ‬nine times, and tā (‫ )ﺕ‬twelve times. Since tā comes third, it is mentioned twelve times. rā (‫ )ﺭ‬is lām ’s sister, but according to their numerical value, rā is two hundred and lām thirty, so since it has risen six times more, it has fallen six. Also, since rā is repeated on pronunciation, it becomes emphatic and is only mentioned six times. And because d.  ād.   (‫)ﺽ‬, thā (‫)ﺙ‬, h. ā (‫ )ﺡ‬and khā (‫ )ﺥ‬are emphatic and gain additional qualities

218

  The Quran and Muhammad in connection with other letters, they have each been mentioned only once. Since wāw (‫ )ﻭ‬is lighter than hā and hamza, and heavier than yā and alif, it is mentioned seventeen times, four times more than heavy hamza and four times less than light alif. 51

For Nursi, the positioning of the letters in the verse, their interrelationships and the order and harmony that they display serve as compelling evidence that it would not be within the capacity of a human mind to have composed it; pure chance can also have played no part, he says. The order and regularity in the positioning of these letters is, Nursi admits, both strange and awe-inspiring, and that they should lead with such facility to such fluency and eloquence of expression suggests that there may be other hidden instances of wisdom that rhetoricians and literary experts have yet to discover. If there is such wisdom in the ordering of the individual letters, Nursi asserts, then there must surely be numerous instances of wisdom in the ordering of words, sentences and verses, and eloquence in the expression (lafz.  ) of the Quran that surpasses both human ability and understanding.52

Comprehensiveness (jāmi‘iyya)

The second of the two pillars upon which Nursi’s discourse on the miraculousness of the Quran rests is conciseness or jāmi‘iyya. Nursi indicates five main areas in which the Quran demonstrates comprehensiveness which is deemed to be at the level of inimitability: in its wording or expression (lafz.  ); in its meaning (ma‘nī); in the knowledge (‘ilm) it displays; in the different subjects (mabāh. ith) it deals with; and its style (uslūb).

Wording or expression (lafz.  )

According to a Prophetic Tradition, Nursi contends, each verse of the Quran has “an outer meaning, an inner meaning, a limit and an aim, and each of these has roots and boughs and branches.” 53 What this means, he says, is that the lafz.   of the Quran is such that all of its phrases, words and letters, even, have many different aspects, and provide all of those whom it addresses with intellectual and spiritual nourishment commensurate with their different capacities and approaches. Take, for example, the verse The heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder.54 A scholar (‘ālim) untainted by the study of philosophy would explain the words joined together like this: while the skies were shining and cloudless, and the earth dry and without life and incapable of giving birth, the skies were opened up with rain and the earth with vegetation, and all living beings were created through a sort of marriage and impregnation. To do this was the work of One so Powerful and Glorious that the face of the earth is merely a small garden of His, while the clouds veiling the face of the skies are sponges for watering it. The scholar understands this and prostrates before the tremendousness of His power. An exacting seeker of wisdom (h. akīm) would explain the same words in this way: while at the start of creation the heavens and earth were a formless mass, each consisting of matter like wet dough without benefit, offspring or creatures, the All-Wise Creator

219

The Qur’an Revealed  both rolled them out and expanded them into a beautiful, beneficial form, and made them the source of adorned and numerous creatures. That sage would stand in wonder before the breadth of His wisdom. A modern philosopher would explain the words thus: at first, our globe and the other planets which form the solar system were fused together in the form of undifferentiated dough. Then the All-Powerful and Self-Subsistent One rolled out the dough and placed each of the planets in its position; leaving the sun where it was and bringing the earth here, He spread soil over the globe of the earth and sprinkled it with rain from the skies, scattered light over it from the sun, and inhabited it, placing us on it. The philosopher would pull his head out of the swamp of nature and declare: “I believe in God, the One, the Unique!” 55

Each verse, then, according to Nursi, speaks to different groups of people, and to individuals, in accordance not only with their capacity to understand in general but also in a manner which addresses their particular academic or intellectual bent. Another example given is the phrase And the sun runs its course to a place appointed.56 The lām (‫)ﻝ‬, translated here as ‘to’, expresses also the meaning of ‘in’. Thus ordinary believers see it as meaning ‘to’ and understand that the sun, which is a mobile lamp providing light and heat for them, will certainly conclude its journeying and reach its place of rest, then take on a form which will no longer be beneficial. And pondering over the great bounties the All-Glorious Creator has attached to the sun, they declare: “Glory be to God! All praise and thanks be to God!” A learned scholar would also show the lām as meaning ‘to’, but he would think of it not only as a lamp, but also as a shuttle weaving the tapestries of the Sustainer on the loom of spring and summer, or as an ink-pot whose ink is light for the letters of the Eternally Besought One written on the pages of night and day. And thinking of the order and regularity of the world, of which the apparent movement of the sun is a sign and to which it points, he would exclaim before His wisdom: “What wonders God has willed!”, and declare before the All-Wise Maker’s art: “How great are His blessings!”, and he would bow in prostration. A cosmologist would explain the lām as meaning ‘in’, like this: through the Divine command and with a spring-like motion on its own axis, the sun orders and propels the solar system. Exclaiming in wonder and amazement before the All-Glorious Maker Who thus creates and sets in order this mighty clock: “All mightiness is God’s, and all power!”, he would cast away philosophy and embrace the wisdom of the Quran. A punctilious sage would consider this lām as both causal and adverbial, and would explain it like this: “Since the All-Wise Maker has made apparent causes a veil to His works, through a Divine law of His called gravity He has tied the planets to the sun like stones in a sling, and causes them to revolve with different but regular motions within the sphere of His wisdom; and He has made the sun’s spinning on its own axis an apparent cause giving rise to the gravity. That is, the meaning of (to) a place appointed is ‘it is in motion in its own appointed place for the stability of the solar system.’ For it is a Divine rule, a dominical law like motion apparently giving rise to heat, and heat to force, and force to gravity.” Thus, on understanding this from a single letter of the Quran, the philosopher would declare: “All praise and thanks be to God! It is in the

220

  The Quran and Muhammad Quran that true wisdom is to be found. I consider philosophy to be worth virtually nothing!” And the following idea would occur to a thinker of poetic bent from this lām and the stability mentioned above: “The sun is a luminous tree and the planets are its mobile fruits. But contrary to trees the sun shakes itself so the fruits do not fall. If it did not shake itself, they would fall and be scattered.” Then he would think to himself: “The sun is the ecstatic leader of a group reciting God’s Names. It recites in ecstasy in the centre of the circle and causes others to recite.” 57

For Nursi, then, the wording of the Quran shows that it is comprehensive of all manners of speech while remaining irreducible to any one manner alone: it speaks to scholars of the natural sciences in the same way that it speaks to poets, yet it can neither be called a book of scientific fact nor described as poetry. Another example cited by Nursi may help us better understand what he means by the comprehensiveness of the Quran in general. The example is the phrase …it is they who will prosper from the fifth verse of the second sūra, al-Baqara : They are on (true) guidance, from their Lord, and it is they who will prosper.58

The phrase, Nursi says, is general and non-specific: it does not say precisely how they will be successful. It is purposefully non-specific, he adds, so that “each person may find what he wants in it.” 59 The aim of some of those it addresses is, he says, is to be saved from hellfire, while others think of success only in terms of paradise. Some desire eternal happiness while others seek only God’s pleasure, and so on. Nursi says that in numerous places, the Quran deliberately leaves the wording open in this way in order to achieve generality; it leaves things unsaid, he says, so that it may express many meanings, and it keeps its verses brief in order that “everyone may find his share.” 60 From a Nursian perspective, then, comprehensiveness should be understood in terms of the openness of Quranic verses to multiple interpretations rather than the notion held by many Muslims that the Quran is somehow the repository of all knowledge.61

Meaning (ma‘nī)

The Quran, Nursi says, is extraordinarily comprehensive in its meanings: For together with bestowing from the treasuries of its meaning the sources for all the interpreters of the Shari‘a, the illuminations of all those seeking knowledge of God, the ways of all those seeking union with God, the paths of all the perfected from among mankind, and the schools of all the scholars, the Quran has at all times been the guide of all of them and directed them in their progress, and it is verified unanimously by all of them that it has illuminated their ways from its treasuries.62

Here, Nursi is referring from another perspective to the multi-faceted nature of a text which allows specialists in different fields of Muslim learning to gain what they need from its different verses, and sometimes from the same verse. Thus those who are experts in legal theory are able to find answers as easily as those who are engaged in spiritual purification and are unpacking the verses of the Quran to uncover its esoteric sub-layers, or those who deal in theological issues and wish to find support for their arguments therein.

221

The Qur’an Revealed 

Knowledge (‘ilm)

The Quran is also deemed to be comprehensive with regard to the different branches of knowledge that it has fostered. According to Nursi: There is an extraordinary comprehensiveness in the Quran’s knowledge. The Quran has caused to flow forth from the oceans of its own knowledge the numerous and various sciences of the sharī‘a, the multifarious sciences of reality (h. aqīqa), and the innumerable different sciences of Sufism (t. arīqa). Similarly, it has caused to flow forth in abundance and good order the true wisdom of the sphere of contingency (dā’ira-i mumkināt), the true sciences of the sphere of necessity (dā’ira-i wujūb) and the enigmatic knowledge of the sphere of the hereafter (dā’ira-i ākhira).63

The comprehensiveness of the Quran’s knowledge is seen, then, to lie in the fact that it gave rise to so many different disciplines; here Nursi alludes to branches of Muslim learning such as legal theory, theology and Sufism – represented by the trio of sharī’a, h. aqīqa and t. ariqa – as well as philosophy and eschatology. Again, the Quran’s knowledge is deemed comprehensive not because it is covers all branches of human learning in encyclopaedic detail but rather because it contains the roots of all that is needed for their development.

Subjects (mabāh. ith)

The Quran is also comprehensive in the subjects or themes that it includes, Nursi main­ tains: For apart from bringing together the extensive subjects of man and his duties, the universe and the Creator of the universe, the heavens and the earth, this world and the hereafter, the past and the future, and pre-eternity and post-eternity, the Quran explains all the essential and important topics from man’s creation from seminal fluid till the time that he enters the grave; from the correct conduct of eating and sleeping to the matters of Divine Decree and Determining; from the creation of the world in six days to the duties of the elements such as the wind… 64

Nursi makes no claim on behalf of the Quran that it is exhaustive in the subjects it discusses. Again, Nursi is not claiming here that the Quran contains all themes under the sun but, rather, that it encompasses all of the “essential and important” topics that its reader needs to make sense not only of the text itself but also of his or her own existential position.

Style (uslūb)

The comprehensiveness of the Quran’s style is such, says Nursi, that a single sūra is like the Quran in miniature, while the Quran in turn contains the whole of the cosmos: Indeed, a single one of its verses contains the treasury of the sūra. And most of the verses are each a short sūra, while most of the sūras are short Qurans. Thus, this is a great favour and guidance and facilitating, arising from its miraculous conciseness. For although everyone has need of the Quran all the time, either due to foolishness or for some other reason they do not have the time to read all of it, or they do not have the opportunity.

222

  The Quran and Muhammad So in order that they should not to be deprived of it, each sūra is like a short Quran, and each long verse even has the rank of a sūra. Those who penetrate to the inner meaning of things agree that the whole Quran is contained in the opening sūra, al-Fātih.  a, even, and the Fātih.  a in the Bismillāh. The proof of this fact is the consensus of the scholars who have investigated it.65

Arguably the most important aspect of the Quran’s comprehensiveness, Nursi argues, is its conciseness (ījāz), which in turn is one of the most important elements of its miraculousness (i‘jāz). The instances of it are so numerous and beautiful that exacting scholars are left in wonder at it. For example: Then the word went forth: “O earth! swallow up your water, and O sky! withhold [your rain]!” And the water abated, and the matter was ended. The ark rested on Mount Judi, and the word went forth: “Away with those who do wrong!” 66 It describes the Great Flood and its consequences so concisely and miraculously in a few short sentences that it has caused many scholars of rhetoric to prostrate before its eloquence. And, for example: The Thamud rejected [their prophet] through their inordinate wrongdoing. Behold, the most wicked man among them was deputed [for impiety]. But the Apostle of God said to them: “It is a she-camel of God. And [bar her not from] having her drink!” Then they rejected him, and they hamstrung her. So their Lord, on account of their crime, obliterated their traces and made them equal [in destruction, high and low]! And for Him is no fear of its consequences.67 In these few short sentences, with a miraculousness within the conciseness, fluency and clarity, and in a way that does not spoil the understanding, the Quran relates the strange, momentous events involving the Thamud people and their consequences, and the Thamud’s calamitous end. And for example: And remember Zun-Nun, when he departed in wrath: he imagined that We had no power over him. But he cried through the depths of darkness: “There is no god but You; glory be unto You; I was indeed among the wrongdoers.” 68 Here, many sentences have been “rolled up” between the words that We had no power over him and but he cried out in the depths of the darkness, but these omitted sentences neither spoil the understanding nor mar the fluency of the style. It mentions the chief elements of the story of Jonah (PBWH) and refers the rest to the intelligence.69

There is, as Nursi intimates, a difference between succinctness and lack of informativity. While ellipsis, a common feature in the Quran, may appear on the surface to detract from the general cohesion of the text, Nursi argues that it takes nothing away from the intended meaning. That which is important in the story of Jonah, for example, has been mentioned: the rest, as Nursi says, is detail and can be left to the reason or the imagination. Furthermore, the existence of ellipsis in the Quran, and the fact that many of the stories of the prophets, for example, are positively minimalist in their expression of incidental detail, show that there is a presupposition on the part of the Quran that its readers are already familiar with the broadbrush narratives, and that it is the conceptual meanings which are important. Of course there are exceptions: the story of Joseph is rich in detail, but none of it can be described as verbose. And even in that story, conciseness has a role to play, as Nursi points out:

223

The Qur’an Revealed  And for example, in sūra Yūsuf, the seven or eight sentences between the words Send me and Joseph, O man of truth! (12:45-6) have been skipped concisely, yet it neither impairs the understanding nor mars the smoothness of the style. There are a great many instances of this sort of miraculous conciseness in the Quran, and they are very beautiful indeed.70

However, it is the conciseness of the verses of the sūra Qāf that Nursi finds particularly striking: However, the conciseness of the verses from sūra Qaf is particularly wonderful and miraculous. For they each point out the truly dreadful future of the unbelievers when each endless day will last fifty thousand years, and the dire things that will happen to them in the awesome revolutions of the future. It flashes them over the mind like lightning, depicting that long, long period of time to the mind’s eye as a single present page. Referring the events that are not mentioned to the imagination, it evokes them with truly elevated fluency and smoothness of style.71

Other aspects of miraculousness

Apart from the eloquence and comprehensiveness of the Quran, together with all of their different aspects, there are various other features of the Quranic genre and the actual event of the Quran which Nursi deems miraculous. These include giving veracious information about past events which could not have been learned through the exercise of reason; foretelling future events; giving news of Divine and cosmic truths, including the existence of the worlds of the unseen and the domain of the hereafter; the ability of the Quran to speak to all levels of people at all times and under constantly changing socio-cultural circumstances; the incomparability of Divine speech with that of humankind; the revolutions in socioeconomic, political, religious and cultural life that the Quran engendered, and so on.72

A summary of Nursi’s approach to Quranic inimitability

Although we have only scratched the surface of Nursi’s discourse on the inimitability of the Quran, we have covered enough to know that for him, to understand the eloquence and comprehensiveness of the Quranic genre, a holistic approach needs to be taken. Arab rhetoricians hold a wide range of different views on what it is, precisely, that makes the Quran immune from imitation. We have seen that some favoured the notion of s.arfa or ‘dissuasion’, believing that while the Arabs were capable of producing material which could match the Quran, their hearts were averted from doing so by God. Ibn Sinān al-Khafājī (d. 1073), for example, believed that the diction styles of the Quran are similar to those which can be found in ‘non-revealed’ prose and poetry, and that if men had not been able to produce verses which matched those of the Quran, it was merely through the process of Divine dissuasion.73 Then there are those who say that certain features of the Quran are part of its inimitability while others are not. In the opinion of al-Jurjānī, for instance, individual lexical items in the Quran – single words – are not part of the i‘jāz of the Quranic genre, while the Mu‘tazilite rhetorician al-Jāh.  iz.   is of the opinion that they are.74 For Nursi, however, it is either all or nothing: one cannot prefer, say, sentence-level analysis over word-level

224

  The Quran and Muhammad analysis, as some grammarians do when evaluating the merits of literary works. Indeed, for the Quran, as Nursi points out, letter-level analysis is also warranted, for the juxtaposition of the individual letters of the Arabic alphabet are, for him, also part of the Quran’s eloquence and thus contribute to its inimitability. In Nursi’s opinion, all aspects of the Quranic genre defy imitation and are, for him at least, ample proof of the text’s Divine origin.

Human or divine? Nursi on the provenance of the Quran

Having endeavoured to show through the perceived inimitability of the Quran as text that the revelation is sui generis, Nursi then proceeds to confront the issue of provenance head on in a short but pithy treatise in which he disputes with the Devil himself over the authorship of the book. Entitled A Proof of the Quran against Satan and his Party, and referred to at times as A Dispute with the Devil, the work is a dialectic designed to expose the frailty of arguments proffered by detractors of the Quran who suggest that believers drop their ‘bias’ and judge the revelation from a neutral – and, hence, ‘objective’ – position. The treatise is the result of an experience that Nursi had during Ramadan while listening to a recitation of the Quran in the Bayezid Mosque in Istanbul: Suddenly, although I could see no one, I seemed to hear an unearthly voice which captured all my attention. I listened with my imagination and realized that it was saying to me:“You consider the Quran to be extremely elevated and brilliant. Be unbiased for a minute and consider it again. That is, suppose it to be man’s word. I wonder whether you would still see the same qualities and beauty in it?” 75

For a few moments, Nursi writes, he was deceived, and thought of the Quran as being the work of man. But as he watched what he called “the brilliant lights of the Quran” fade one after the other, like the lights of the mosque being switched off and plunging everything into darkness, he realised that he had fallen foul of satanic insinuations and was being draw “towards the abyss.” 76 Summoning help from the Quran itself, he began to argue back at the Devil. I said: “O Satan! Unbiased thinking is to take a position between two sides. Whereas what both you and your disciples from among men call unbiased thinking is to take the part of the opposing side; it is not impartiality, it is temporary unbelief. Because to consider the Quran to be man’s word and to judge it as such is to take the part of the opposing side; it is to favour something baseless and invalid. It is not being unbiased, it is being biased towards falsehood.” 77

Nursi here is challenging the validity of the notion that one can argue from a position of moral or philosophical neutrality. As far as the provenance of the Quran is concerned, to imagine that it is not the word of God is not to take an unbiased stance; rather, it is to side with the opposition, which is hardly consonant with the notion of neutrality. The idea that one can take a neutral position with regard to the provenance of the Quran is based on the more general conviction that the scientific investigation of the world takes place without philosophical or ideological presuppositions or implications, and that such investigation is a completely neutral position towards the ontological status of the things that it studies. Furthermore, there is an

225

The Qur’an Revealed  unspoken assumption that the method of investigation itself – scientific or otherwise – is a neutral one which can be applied across the board to the study of all things. Nursi’s satanic interlocutor then changes direction slightly: The Devil replied: “Well, in that case, say it is neither God’s Word nor man’s word. Think of it as between the two.” To which I rejoined: “That is not possible either. For if there is a disputed property for which there are two claimants, and the claimants are close both to one another and to the property, the property will then either be given to someone other than them, or will be put somewhere accessible so that whoever proves ownership can take it. If the two claimants are far apart with one in the East and one in the West, then according to the rule, it will remain with the one who has possession of it, as it is not possible for it to be left somewhere between them.” 78

The Quran, Nursi asserts, is a valuable property whose claimants are indeed far apart: the word of God is infinitely distant from the word of man and so it is not possible for the Quran to be left between the two. For they are opposites like existence and non-existence or the two magnetic poles: there can be no middle point between them. In which case, for the Quran, the one who possesses it is God’s side. As such, it will be accepted as being in His possession, and the proofs of ownership will be regarded in that way. Should the opposing side refute all the arguments proving it to be God’s Word, it may claim ownership of it; otherwise it may not. 79

For Nursi, then, the matter is a relatively simple one: the Quran is either the word of God or the word of man, and there can be no ‘middle position’. Since God claims ownership of the Quran, it should be accepted as His word until it can be proven otherwise. “And so, in spite of you, O Satan!, the just and the fair-minded reason in this equitable and rightful manner. They increase their belief in the Quran through even the slightest evidences. While according to the way shown by you and your disciples, if just once it is supposed to be man’s word and that mighty jewel fastened to the Divine Throne is cast to the ground, a proof with the strength of all the nails and the firmness of many proofs becomes necessary in order to raise it from the ground and fasten it once more to the Throne, and so be saved from the darkness of unbelief and reach the lights of belief. But because it is extremely difficult to do this, due to your wiles, many people are losing their faith at this time by imagining themselves to be making unbiased judgements.” 80

Apparently unable to deny that what often passes as unbiased judgment is in actual fact nothing more than the opposing view, the Devil changes tack and adopts a different stratagem. The Quran, he says, resembles the words of men and is similar to the way that they converse. Ergo, it is the product of a human mind. For if it were the word of God, he asserts, it would be appropriate to Him and would be altogether out of the ordinary. “Just as His art does not resemble man’s art,” the Devil reasons, “then His words should not resemble man’s words.” Nursi replies: This issue may be understood as follows: apart from his miracles and special attributes, the Prophet Muhammad (PBWH) was a human being in all his actions, conduct and

226

  The Quran and Muhammad behaviour. He submitted to and complied with the Divine laws and commands manifested in creation. He too suffered from the cold, experienced pain and so on. So that he could be the leader of his community through his actions, its guide through his conduct, and instruct it through all his behaviour, his deeds and attributes were not all made out of the ordinary. If he had been out of the ordinary in all his conduct, he could not himself have been the leader in every respect, the total guide of everyone, the ‘Mercy to All the Worlds’ through all his attributes. In just the same way, the All-Wise Quran is the leader to the aware and the conscious, the guide of jinn and men, the teacher of those attaining to perfection, and instructor of those seeking reality. It is of necessity and of a certainty, therefore, in the same form as man’s conversation and style. For men and jinn take their supplications from it and learn their prayers from it; they express their concerns in its language and learn from it the rules of social behaviour, and so on. Everyone has recourse to it. If, therefore, it had been in the form of the Divine speech which the Prophet Moses (PBWH) heard on Mount Sinai, man could not have borne listening to it and hearing it, nor made it the point of reference and recourse. Moses (PBWH), one of the five greatest prophets, could only endure to hear a few words.81

That the language of revelation should be the same as that of its recipients – a human language – is for Nursi a given: if the Quran really is a book of instruction, it has to be accessible to those whom it purports to instruct. Even though the message is deemed to be the direct word of God, it is always revealed, as Nursi points out elsewhere in the Risale, in the language of the messenger to whom it is vouchsafed. The fact that God speaks in a way that man can understand is what Nursi calls ‘Divine condescension’. This means that the Divine words are communicated to man not only in a form that he can understand but also in a manner which is accessible to every individual on his or her own level of intellection. The spirit which imbues the message may well be Divine and thus eternal, but the form of the message – the letters, words and sounds – are clearly created and patently of this world. Indeed, as Nursi points out, Divine dominicality requires that the recipient of the message understand the One who sends it. Divine speech is, as the example of Moses indicates, impossible to ‘bear’ unless it ‘descends’ through the filter of phenomenality to the created realm, where it takes on a form appropriate to that domain. Nursi’s debating rival then resorts to a different line of argument. Many people, he says, speak of matters similar to those mentioned in the Quran in the name of religion. Given this, is it not possible that the Quran too is a human fabrication that poses as revelation, albeit in the name of religion? There are several parts to Nursi’s answer: Firstly, out of love for his faith, someone who is religious may say, ‘The truth is like this, the reality of the matter is like that; Almighty God commands such and such’, and so on. However, he would never make God speak to suit himself. Trembling at the verse Who, then does more wrong than one who utters a lie concerning God?,82 such a person would not overstep the mark to an infinite degree by imitating God and speaking on His behalf.83

When taken out of its broader context, the first part of Nursi’s answer may be countered by the contention that many are those who have appeared throughout history with claims of prophethood but who have turned out to be charlatans and opportunists with nothing more

227

The Qur’an Revealed  than pretence and fabrication to their names. However, Nursi’s line of reasoning does not stop here. It is one thing for a person to deceive people momentarily, or even for a relatively lengthy period of time, but it is nigh on impossible, he argues, to deceive them forever. Secondly, it is in no way possible for a human being to be successful in doing such a thing on his own; in fact, it is completely impossible. Individuals who resemble one another may imitate one another, those of the same kind may take on one another’s forms, those who are close to one another in rank or status may imitate one another and temporarily deceive people, but they cannot do so for ever. For in any event, the falseness and artificiality in their behaviour will show up their imposture to the observant, and their deception will not last. If the one who is attempting to imitate another under false pretences is quite unlike them, for example, if an uneducated man wants to imitate in learning a genius like Ibn Sina, or a shepherd assume the position of a king, of course they will not deceive anyone at all, they will only make fools of themselves. Everything they do will proclaim, ‘This is an impostor.’ 84

That Muhammad, who was acknowledged even by his most recalcitrant detractors as a man of trustworthiness and integrity, should have pulled off such an act of imposture is, for Nursi, completely unthinkable. To imagine the Quran to be the word of man, he says, is like imagining that a fire-fly might be mistaken by astronomers for a real star for over a thousand years; it is like a common private soldier masquerading as a field marshal, taking over his position and remaining in it for years without his deception being revealed. For Muhammad to claim that his own words were the words of God would, Nursi asserts, be like “a slandering unbelieving liar affecting the manner and disposition of the most truthful, trustworthy, upright believer throughout his life and being completely unruffled before even the most observant, while at the same time concealing his fraud from them.” 85 If one supposes that the Quran is the word of man, he concludes, then a book which has been considered for centuries to be a “most brilliant star…perpetually scattering the lights of truth in the heavens of the world of Islam” would be reduced to the status of a mere firefly – a sham concocted by a fraudulent human being. However, the fact that those who are closest to the Quran, and who study it most carefully, have not detected such imposture would seem to provide overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Only those who lack sound reason are fooled, Nursi concludes, for the Devil is sometimes able to trick people by making them look at the Quran from a distance, thus making what is in reality a star appear as small as a fire-fly. Also, if the Quran is imagined to be man’s word, it necessitates that the hidden reality of a criterion of truth and falsehood, which is miraculous in its exposition, and through the testimony of its fruits, results and effects, is gilded with the most spiritual and life-giving, the most truthful and happiness-bringing, the most comprehensive and exalted qualities in the world of mankind, is, God forbid, the fabrication of a single unaided and unlearned man’s mind. And yet the great geniuses and brilliant scholars who observed that being closely and studied him meticulously at no time saw any trace of counterfeit or pretence in him and always found him serious, genuine and sincere.86

Again, Nursi appeals here to the reputation of Muhammad as one who, throughout his life, “demonstrated and taught trust, belief, confidence, sincerity, seriousness and integrity

228

  The Quran and Muhammad through all his conduct, words and actions.” 87 He raised numerous followers who possessed similar qualities and was accepted – even by his enemies – as being in possession of the most elevated of human virtues. To imagine that the Quran is Muhammad’s fabrication is to cast doubt on the judgment not only of Muhammad’s followers but also of his detractors, none of whom, it is alleged, witnessed any trace of fraudulence in him and always found him truthful and sincere. If the Quran were not the word of God, Nursi says, it would “fall as though from the Divine throne to the ground”; it could not remain at some point in between.88 Similarly if the Quran were a fabrication, Muhammad would no longer be God’s messenger, which would also necessitate a fall from grace. Indeed, as Nursi points out, Muhammad would then fall from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low, descending from the very highest degree of possible human perfection to the level of the most devious liar and charlatan: he too could not remain at any middle point between these two extremes. In short, the Quran is either the word of God or it is not; similarly, Muhammad is either the messenger of God or he is nothing. There is, for Nursi at least, no third way. If the Quran is not the word of God, Nursi concludes, it has to be accepted as the word of the very worst of liars. And as for this, O Satan, even if you were a hundred times more satanic, you could not deceive any mind that was not unsound, nor persuade any heart that was not corrupted. The Devil retorted: “How should I not deceive them? I have deceived most of mankind and their foremost thinkers into denying the Quran and Muhammad!” To which I replied: “Firstly, when seen from a great distance, the greatest thing appears the same as the smallest. A star may even appear as a candle. Secondly, when seen superficially, something which is completely impossible may appear to be possible. For example, once an old man was watching the sky in order to see the new moon of Ramadan when a white hair fell on his eye. Imagining it to be the moon, he announced: ‘I have seen the new moon.’ Now, it is impossible that the white hair should have been the moon, but because his intention was to look for just the moon and the hair was by the way and incidental, he paid it no attention and thought that the impossible was possible.” 89

What Nursi is saying here is that when not subjected to proper scrutiny, or when considered superficially, there are many things which are in fact impossible which may indeed appear possible, and when non-acceptance of the truth ensues as a result, it is on account of an ultimately forgivable ignorance. However, he says, non-acceptance is one thing; denial (inkār) is another issue entirely: Non-acceptance (‘adam-i qabūl) is indifference, a closing of the eyes to something, an ignorant absence of judgement. Many completely impossible things may be concealed within it, and the mind does not concern itself with them. As for denial (inkār), it is not non-acceptance (‘adam-i qabūl), but an acceptance of non-existence (qabūl-i ‘adam); it is a judgement (h. ukm). The mind is compelled to work. So a devil like you takes hold of the mind of a person, then leads it to denial. And, showing the false as truth and the impossible as possible through satanic wiles like heedlessness, misguidance, fallacious reasoning, obstinacy, false arguments, pride, deception and habit, you make those unfortunate creatures in human form swallow unbelief and denial, although they comprise innumerable impossibilities.90

229

The Qur’an Revealed  The word ‘non-acceptance’ here is a rendering of the Arabic ‘adam-i qabūl, which translates literally as ‘the non-existence of acceptance’. Nursi uses this term to describe the attitude of those whose rejection of truths is in a sense non-reactive: it is more a result of the failure to engage intellectually with the issue than of any attempt to form a considered opinion about it. With regard to belief in God, for example, the ‘non-existence of acceptance’ denotes the position of those who are basically disinterested: they are people who “don’t bother” rather than people who actively “don’t believe”. They are atheists by default - not because they have given the issue of belief in God any consideration, but rather because they tend to be of the opinion that there is no point in thinking about it in order to form an opinion. One might classify them as passive agnostic atheists. In contradistinction, Nursi reverses the order of the words ‘adam-i qabūl – the non-existence of acceptance – to form qabul-i ‘adam, or the ‘acceptance of non-existence’. This, he says, describes the attitude of those whose rejection of truths is reactive: it is the result of conscious engagement with the issues at hand and it is predicated on certain considered opinions. With regard to belief in God, the ‘acceptance of non-existence’ denotes the position of those who strive actively to disprove the claims of theism by arguing in favour of the non-existence of the Divine. In Nursi’s opinion, passive agnostic atheism is relatively harmless; it is aggressive, reactive atheism which is fuelled by, and provides food for, the endeavours of Satan in his mission to mislead mankind. Finally, Nursi argues, the Quran is a book which has for centuries guided numerous saints and spiritual masters, “who shine like stars in the heavens of the world of mankind.” 91 It has instructed countless millions of people at all levels in the ideals of truth and justice, veracity and trustworthiness, and has encouraged them to work for the happiness of both worlds by adhering to the principles of belief and the pillars of Islam. These achievements, Nursi asserts, go a long way to demonstrating that it is of necessity a veracious text which enshrines the truth. However, to imagine that it is the word of man is to suppose that it embodies the very opposites of these qualities and effects. For to imagine that it is the word of man is to reduce it to a collection of fabrications and lies. And this, Nursi argues, “would shame even the sophists and the devils, causing them to tremble.” 92 Furthermore, it would necessitate that an individual who was acclaimed by friend and foe alike as the most steadfast, trustworthy and truthful of his generation was, in fact, nothing more than a fraud and a liar. To imagine this, Nursi says, involves “imagining the most loathsome form of impossibility and perpetrating the most iniquitous and vicious sort of misguidance.” 93 In short, the common people, whose understanding of the Quran is gained by listening to it, say, ‘Were the Quran to be compared with all the books I have listened to and the other books in the world, it would not resemble any of them; it is not of the same sort as them nor of the same degree.’ The Quran, then, is of a degree either above all of them or below all of them. To be below them is impossible, and no enemy, not the Devil even, could accept it. In which case, the Quran is above all other books, and is therefore a miracle. “And so, O Satan and O disciples of Satan! The Quran is either the Word of God sent from the Supreme Throne of God and His Greatest Name, or, God forbid, and again, God forbid, it is a human forgery fabricated on earth by someone without belief who neither feared God nor knew Him. In the face of the above proofs, O Satan, you can neither say that, nor could you have said it, nor will you be able to say it in the future.

230

  The Quran and Muhammad Therefore, the Quran is the Word of the Creator of the universe. Because there is no point between the two; it is impossible and precluded that there should be. We have proved this in the most clear and decisive manner; and you have seen it and heard it. In the same way, Muhammad (PBWH) is either God’s Messenger and the highest of the prophets and the most superior of creatures, or, God forbid, he has to be imagined to be someone without belief having fallen to the lowest of the low because he lied concerning God, and did not know God, and did not believe in His punishment. And as for this, O Devil, neither you nor the philosophers of Europe and hypocrites of Asia on whom you rely could say it, nor could you say it in the past, neither shall you be able to say it in the future, for there is no one in the world who would listen to it and accept it. It is because of this that the most corrupting of those philosophers and the most lacking in conscience of the hypocrites, even, admit that ‘Muhammad the Arabian (PBWH) was very clever, and was most moral and upright.’ Since this matter is restricted to these two sides, and the second one is impossible and no one at all claims it to be true, and since we have proved with decisive arguments that there is no point between them, for sure and of necessity, in spite of you and your party, Muhammad the Arabian (PBWH) is the Prophet of God, and the highest of the prophets and the best of all creatures.” 94

While in his discourse on the perceived miraculousness of the Quran, Nursi invokes the inimitability of the language of revelation as an indication of its Divine provenance, in his ‘dispute with the Devil’ he endeavours to debunk the idea that one can be impartial towards the Quran, while showing that there is no ‘third way’ as far as the provenance of the text is concerned. At first glance, Nursi appears to be presenting the reader with the disjunctive syllogism below: The author of the Quran is either God or Muhammad The author of the Quran is not Muhammad Therefore the author of the Quran is God

Usually, the truth-value of premises in an argument like this is not a question for logic but rather for other sciences, or for plain common sense. While arguments with false premises are unsound, they are not usually considered fallacious. However, when a disjunctive premise is false for logical reasons, or when the support for it is fallacious, then the argument falls foul of the ‘black and white fallacy’.95 The argument laid out in the disjunctive syllogism above is valid but it is clearly not sound because it is based on a fallacious premise: to say that either God is the author of the Quran or Muhammad is its author is to exclude countless other alternatives, such as the possibility, suggested by certain Western scholars, that the Quran is the work of multiple hands and dates from the eighth or ninth century at the very earliest.96 What Nursi is highlighting here, however, is a disjunction whose disjuncts are contradictories rather than contraries, as is the case in the unsound syllogism cited above. At the heart of Nursi’s dispute with the Devil is his argument that the Quran is either the work of God or it is not; since the disjuncts in this proposition are contradictories, this constitutes an instance of the law of non-contradiction, which is logically easy to accept. Bearing this in mind, we can now rewrite the syllogism above in a way which reflects more accurately the line of argument adopted not only by Nursi in the Risale, but also by countless scholars before him who dealt with the issue of the Quran’s inimitability and ultimate provenance:

231

The Qur’an Revealed  The author of the Quran is either God or a human being (or beings) The author of the Quran cannot be a human being (or beings) Therefore the author of the Quran is God

While this revised argument avoids the element which rendered it unsound in the original – namely, the proposition that the Quran is either the word of God or the word of Muhammad – it remains unsound here too, despite its logical validity. It remains unsound logically speaking because the proposition ‘The author of the Quran cannot be a human being’ is problematic from a purely logical perspective. It is problematic because it cannot be proven: any attempt to demonstrate its veracity is no more than an attempt, and however compelling the conclusions drawn from the debates on i‘jāz or the appeals to either the illiteracy or the trustworthiness of Muhammad may be, such an attempt can never yield incontrovertible proof that the Quran is the word of God. For Nursi, as for all believers, all indications clearly point in that direction, but ultimately it is faith and intuition rather than cast-iron certainty which must tip the balance in favour of one’s either accepting or rejecting the proposition that God and God alone is the source of the Islamic revelation.

The prophethood of Muhammad

Nursi’s foregoing dialectic provides his reader with what he believes to be conclusive evidence not only that the Quran cannot be the word of man but also that its primary addressee – Muhammad – stands acquitted of all charges of fraud and mendacity levelled against him by the advocatus diaboli in the text. From the Nursian perspective, then, Dispute with the Devil thus serves both to validate the authenticity of the Quran as the word of God as vouchsafed to Muhammad and to corroborate the latter’s claim to be the final recipient of direct, Divine revelation. Yet what Nursi describes as ‘proofs’ of Muhammad’s prophethood are scattered throughout the Risale and are certainly not confined to the classical arguments forwarded in favour of Muhammad’s claim, such as the fact that he, as an ‘unlettered’ (ummī) man, could not have produced a work as allegedly sublime as the Quran by himself, and that even if he had possessed the literary wherewithal to do so, would never have left his apparently well-known reputation for honesty open to universal impugnment by claiming that it was the word of God rather than a concoction of his own mind. Nursi uses a wide range of scriptural and non-scriptural arguments to show why, for him, the evidence is clearly in favour of Muhammad’s being the messenger of God and His final prophet. A number of them are explored below.

The prophethood of Muhammad is required by the Divine names

In the previous chapter we saw how, according to Nursi, Divine self-expression which takes place through the manifestation of the ‘Beautiful Names’ of God necessitates revelation, and how revelation in turn demands the existence of prophets. Nursi now focuses his attention on Muhammad, concluding that his prophethood, and his status as ‘seal of the prophets’, is a necessary concomitant of the manifestation of the Divine Names, and in particular the names ‘Sapient’ (h. akam) and ‘All-Wise’ (h. akīm).

232

  The Quran and Muhammad It may be said that the Names of Sapient and All-Wise point to and necessitate the Prophethood of the Noble Prophet (PBWH) to the degree of being self-evident. For a most meaningful book requires a teacher to teach it, and an exquisite beauty requires a mirror in which to see itself. A most perfect art requires a herald to announce it, and for sure among mankind, who is addressed by the mighty book of the universe, in every letter of which are hundreds of meanings and instances of wisdom, there will be a perfect guide and a supreme teacher. For then he may teach the sacred and true wisdom in the book and thus make known the existence of the wisdom and purposes in the universe; indeed, [he himself will] be the means of the appearance, and even the existence, of the dominical purposes in the universe’s creation. He will make known and act as a mirror to the perfect art of the Creator and the beauty of His Names, which He willed to display throughout the universe. 97

As we saw in Chapter Two, Nursi sees the cosmos as a collection of mirrors held up to the Divine Names in order that the Creator may gaze upon His own perfections. Again we need to bring to mind here the ‘sacred Tradition’ (h. adīth qudsī) in which God is alleged to have said, “I was a Treasure but was not known. So I loved to be known, and I created the creatures and made Myself known to them. Then they came to know Me.” Things exist, Nursi says, in order that God may observe His own beauty in them, and so that He may be known, loved and worshipped as His Godhead demands. Now all created beings are deemed to be mirrors, each reflecting the names of God in accordance with the extent of its innate receptivity. And the most comprehensive mirror of all is mankind, who, as vicegerent of God, is potentially capable of manifesting all of the names. Given this, and bearing in mind the difference in the capabilities of human beings to display the attributes of perfection, it follows that there must be one human being who is more capable of reflecting the names more comprehensively than the rest. The existence of such a being – a near-perfect mirror – is demanded by the attributes of absolute perfection of the One who will reflect in it. In other words, out of the countless, differently sized and shaped mirrors which make up the vast looking-glass that is the phenomenal world, one of those mirrors will be more comprehensive in its ability to reflect the attributes of perfection than all other mirrors. Muhammad, Nursi contends, is such a mirror. For without the ‘perfect man’, the perfections of the Creator of mankind cannot be communicated as they should be. Perfect teachings require a perfect human teacher to convey them, and that perfect teacher, Nursi asserts, is the Prophet. However, the Prophet is not just a near-perfect place of manifestation (maz.  har) of the Divine Names; he is also a near-perfect displayer (muz.  hir) of them. And since the Creator wants to make Himself loved through all His beings and to be responded to by all His conscious creatures, one of them will respond with comprehensive worship in the name of all of them in the face of those comprehensive dominical manifestations; he will bring the land and sea to ecstasy, turn the gazes of those conscious creatures to the One Who made the art with a tumultuous announcement and exaltation which will cause the heavens and earth to reverberate; and with sacred instruction and teaching and a Quran of Mighty Stature which will draw the attention of all reasonable people, will demonstrate in the best way the Divine purposes of that Sapient and All-

233

The Qur’an Revealed  Wise Maker; and who will respond in the most complete and perfect manner to the manifestations of all His instances of wisdom and of His Beauty and Glory; the existence of such a one is as necessary, as essential for the universe as the existence of the sun. And the one who did this and performed those functions in most perfect form was selfevidently the Most Noble Prophet (PBWH). In which case, all the wisdom in the universe necessitates the Prophethood of Muhammed (PBWH) as much as the sun necessitates light, and light, the day.98

Among his fellow human beings, Muhammad is thus deemed the most comprehensive locus of manifestation of the Divine Names in their entirety, as well as the most perfect conscious displayer of those Names to the rest of creation. In the words of the Quran, Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful exemplar for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah.99

Muhammad is a ‘beautiful exemplar’ (uswa h. asana) on account of the fact that he is the most perfect and comprehensive mirror for the Divine Names, which, through his conscious worship, he makes known to the rest of the creation; not for nothing does the Quran have God declare to him that We sent thee not, but as a Mercy for all creatures.100 That Muhammad is a mercy in the sense of making God known, both through his being a recipient of the revelation and through his status as the most comprehensive human mirror held up to the Divine Names, is a recurring theme in Nursi’s discourse on the nature of Muhammadan prophethood: For example, the all-embracing mercy which is the manifestation of the Name of Most Merciful is apparent through the one (i.e. Muhammad) sent as a Mercy to All the Worlds. And Almighty God’s making Himself known and loved, which is the manifestation of the Name of Loving, gives the fruit of that Beloved of the Sustainer of All the Worlds, and finds response in him. And all instances of beauty, which are the manifestation of the Name of Beauteous, that is, the beauty of the Divine Essence, the beauty of the Divine Names, beauty of art, and the beauty of creatures, are seen and displayed in the Mirror of Muhammed (PBWH). And the manifestations of the splendour of dominicality and sovereignty of Divinity are known, become apparent and understood, and are confirmed through the Prophethood of Muhammed (PBWH), the herald of the dominion of dominicality. And so on, like these examples, most of the Most Beautiful Names are shining proofs of the Prophethood of Muhammed (PBWH).101

Indeed, says, Nursi, just as the existence of the universe and the attributes of perfection which underpin it points to the Owner of those attributes in their absolute forms, the existence of that Owner and all of the perfections which are His requires the existence of one who will be the most perfect means imaginable of making the existence of the Owner known. And thus the Prophethood of Muhammed (PBWH), who is the supreme guide, most perfect teacher, pre-eminent herald, solver of the talisman of the universe, mirror ·of the Eternally Besought One, beloved of the Most Merciful and the means of those attributes and acts being known, indeed of their perfection, and even of their being

234

  The Quran and Muhammad realized, can in no way be denied. Like the lights of the world of reality and of the reality of the universe, his Prophethood is the universe’s most brilliant light. 102

The prophethood of Muhammad is required by life (h.  ayāt) itself

Moreover, the essential nature of life requires not only prophethood in general, Nursi contends, but the prophethood of Muhammad in particular. For the universe was created for life, and life is a greatest manifestation of the Pre-Eternal Self-Subsistent One, a perfect inscription of His and a most beautiful work of His art. And the Eternal Life shows Itself through the sending of prophets and the revealing of scriptures; if there were no Books or prophets, that Pre-Eternal Life would not be known. And just as it is through his speech that it is understood that a person is alive, so too it is prophets and the scriptures they bring that make known the words and speech of the One Who speaks from beyond the World of the Unseen, beneath the veil of the universe, Who commands and prohibits and utters His address. And so certainly just as the life in the universe testifies decisively to the necessary existence of the Pre-Eternal Ever-Living One, it looks also to the pillars of belief of the ‘sending of prophets’ and ‘revelation of scriptures,’ which are the rays, manifestations and communications of that Pre-Eternal Life. And since the Prophethood of Muhammad (PBWH) and the Quranic revelation are like the spirit and intelligence of life, it may be said that their truth is as certain as the existence of life. Yes, just as life is the distilled essence of the universe; and consciousness and sense perception are distilled from life and are the essence of life; and intelligence too is distilled from consciousness and sense perception and is the essence of consciousness; and spirit is the pure, unsullied substance of life, its stable and autonomous essence - so too the physical and spiritual life of Muhammad·(PBWH) is the distilled quintessence of the universe; and the Prophethood of Muhammad (PBWH) is the very purest essence distilled from the senses, consciousness and intelligence of the universe. Indeed, the physical and spiritual life of Muhammad (PBWH) is, through the testimony of its works, the very life of the life of the universe. And the Prophethood of Muhammad (PBWH) is the consciousness and light of the universe’s consciousness. While the Quranic revelation, according to the testimony of its living truths, is the spirit of the universe’s life and the intelligence of its consciousness. Yes, yes, yes! If the light of the Prophethood of Muhammed (PBWH) were to depart from the universe, the universe would die. If the Quran were to depart, the universe would go mad, the earth would lose its head and its reason; it would even strike its now unconscious head on a planet and Doomsday would occur. 103

To say that the existence of the universe depends on the light of the prophethood of Muhammad may be unsettling for some readers, and may appear incongruous when placed alongside the caveats found in both the Quran and the corpus of Prophetic Traditions which confirm that Muhammad was, his status as prophet notwithstanding, just a man like any other men, who ate, drank, slept and eventually died. The way that the Prophet is lauded by Nursi as ‘the life of the life of the universe’ and, elsewhere, the very reason for the creation of the cosmos, may raise questions in some minds about both the existential

235

The Qur’an Revealed  status of Muhammad the man and, more importantly, the nature of prophethood itself. For example, if Muhammad is the ‘very purest essence distilled from the senses, consciousness and intelligence of the universe’, one question which may be asked is this: was Muhammad chosen as Prophet on merit or was he foreordained to take on the role? It would seem at first glance that foreordainment is problematic, because then the whole issue of personal merit would surely be called into question. But are the two actually mutually exclusive? Nursi, as a believer, would no doubt argue that they are not. God knew from ‘pre-eternity’ that out of all beings in existence, Muhammad would be the most worthy of bearing the burden and accepting the honour of prophethood, and so in this sense was ‘chosen’ from among all humankind. Thus it may be argued that Muhammad’s intrinsic humanity need not necessarily stand at odds with the notion of his being ‘the very life of the life of the universe’. He was a man, it is true, but for Nursi he was clearly the ‘perfect man’ and the choicest example of humankind, which is itself ‘the most noble of all creatures’ (ashraf al-makhluqāt). To claim that the universe depends for its continued existence on the ‘light of Muhammad’ is not to raise him to the level of demiurge, even though it may often appear that this is what the more extreme among his admirers would have him be. What Nursi is trying to say when he talks about the ‘Muhammadan light’ seems unproblematic enough: without Muhammad, who through his own spiritual journeying became – as God ‘knew’ from ‘pre-eternity’ that he would – the most perfect mirror held up to the Divine attributes, those attributes, and with them the nature of their Owner, would have remained forever unknown. In other words, just as the Creator is known in a general fashion through His creation, He is known specifically and most perfectly through the most perfect of His creatures. For Nursi, as for other Muslim believers, Muhammad was, is and always will be the most perfect of human beings, and since God’s pre-eternal knowledge encompassed this fact, this is why he was ‘chosen’ to convey the message of the Quran.

Muhammad’s humanity

Sensing that talk of the ‘Muhammadan light’ and the dependence of the cosmos on the being of Muhammad for its existence may be perplexing for his readers, Nursi is quick to assure them that, prophethood aside, Muhammad is a man in all mundane respects like other men: Apart from his miracles and special attributes, the Prophet Muhammad (UWBP) was a human being in all his actions, conduct and behaviour. He submitted to and complied with the divine laws and commands manifested in creation. He too suffered from the cold, experienced pain, and so on. His deeds and attributes were not all made out of the ordinary so that he could be the leader of his community through his actions, its guide through his conduct, and instruct it through all his behaviour. If he had been out of the ordinary in all his conduct, he could not have been the leader in every respect, the complete guide for everyone and the “Mercy to All the Worlds” through all his attributes. 104

While all of Muhammad’s acts and personality traits testify to the veracity of his prophethood, Nursi says, not all of them had to be miraculous. Indeed, although Nursi does discuss

236

  The Quran and Muhammad numerous miracles alleged to have been worked through the medium of Muhammad, the Quran does not mention any of them directly. That the Quran was Muhammad’s supreme miracle is, of course, claimed implicitly by the Quran in its challenge to its detractors to bring a chapter which resembles or betters it. Yet one should bear in mind that even though the Quran is deemed to be a miracle, the Prophet’s part in it extends no further than his being a passive recipient of the Divine word, his role being similar to that of a pen in the hand of a writer, with the writer corresponding to God. It is important for Nursi that Muhammad be seen not as a supernatural worker of wonders but as a man who, even though he embodied the most elevated human virtues, was still just a man. Had he been otherwise, he would never have been able to appeal to the people on their level and in terms of reference that they could understand. The humanity and ordinariness of the prophets mentioned in the Quran, all of whom are flawed, credible beings, allows for understanding and fellow feeling; had the prophets been superhuman, angelic beings, a true rapport between them and their people would have been impossible. As Nursi says, if Muhammad had abandoned the human state in his acts and become extraordinary in all aspects, he could never have been a leader or instructed other human beings through his words, actions and demeanour. That he was, as Nursi puts it, “honoured with paranormal phenomena”, does not detract from the fact that he was a mere mortal: evidentiary miracles were given to all of the prophets in order to prove their prophethood to unbelievers as and when the need arose. Those miracles, including the revelation of the Quran, have nothing to do with their recipients, who play no part in their unfolding apart from acting as a locus of manifestation. This goes some way, it may be argued, to addressing the issue of prophetic infallibility or ‘is.ma. Most Muslims believe that the prophets were ma‘s.ūm or ‘immune from the ability to do wrong’, i.e. infallible, although what this actually means in practice is open to debate. For some, prophetic infallibility means that prophets are unable to commit major sins; for others, it means that prophets are immune from all sins, major and minor. The reason that some claim total immunity from sin on the part of the prophets is not difficult to grasp. The responsibilities of prophethood are clearly considerable, and would not be entrusted to someone who was as fallible as everyone else. The problem with the popular understanding of ‘is.ma is that it transforms the human messenger figure into little more than an angelic automaton. For a man who is unable to err cannot be called human in any meaningful sense of the word, and a man who is not human in the way that others are human cannot, as Nursi says, carry out the functions demanded by prophethood. The real merit of prophethood lies in the moral excellence of the prophet, and where there is no ability to do wrong, there can be no moral excellence. One of the ways in which the prophets distinguish themselves from other men is through the refinement of their moral characters, an endeavour which can take place only if the commitment of error remains an ever-present possibility. The prophets whose stories appear in the Quran are all portrayed as men of outstanding moral character, yet almost all of them appear to have made mistakes at various points in their careers. Moses, for example, committed manslaughter out of anger, while Jonah was imprisoned in the belly of the great fish on account of his chronic impatience with God. While none of them is recorded as ever having committed willfully any of the major sins, the prophets of the Quran appear as flawed, credible beings who are all the more believable

237

The Qur’an Revealed  because of their foibles and shortcomings. Men are far more likely to empathise with fallible human beings like these than with the infallible automatons of popular Muslim tradition. The doctrine of ‘is.ma, then, needs to be reconsidered. As far as Muhammad is concerned, any infallibility can pertain only to his receiving and transmitting of the message vouchsafed to him through revelation, in which he was in any case a totally passive agent. While his prophethood was not confined solely to the receipt of revelation, in all affairs other than the revelation of the Quran he was in every aspect like other men, as were the prophets who preceded him. Rather than see prophets, then, as individuals who were unable to err, we should see them perhaps as men who were perfectly capable of making mistakes, and even sinning, but who in the main chose not to, cushioned as they were by the heightened sense of restraint that accompanies faith at this level. To rob a man of the ability to sin is not only to disqualify him for prophethood but also to negate him as a member of humankind. Given this, a more credible translation of ‘is.ma may be ‘impeccability’ rather than ‘infallibility’.

On the qualities and virtues of Muhammad

In his Nineteenth Word, Nursi enumerates some of the virtues and qualities of Muhammad which, to his mind, provide further indications of the veracity of his claim to prophethood. The first is the fact that Muhammad is considered one of three “great and universal things” which make known the existence and unity of God, the other two being the Quran and the cosmos in its entirety. Yes, consider the collective strength of this proof: the face of the earth has become his mosque; Mecca, his mihrab; and Medina, his pulpit. Our Prophet (PBWH), this clear proof, is leader of all the believers, preacher to all mankind, the chief of all the prophets, lord of all the saints, the leader of a circle for the remembrance of God comprising all the prophets and saints. He is a luminous tree whose living roots are all the prophets and whose fresh fruits are all the saints; whose claims all the prophets relying on their miracles and all the saints relying on their wonder-working confirm and corroborate. For he declares and claims: “There is no god but God!” And all on left and right, that is, those luminous reciters of God’s Names lined up in the past and the future, repeat the same words, and through their consensus in effect declare: “You speak the truth and what you say is right!” What false idea has the power to meddle in a claim which is thus affirmed and corroborated by thousands? 105

Muhammad is seen here as the central link in the chain which connects all of the prophets who preceded him with all of the saints and scholars who came in his wake, all of whom were preaching the same message that he preached, as though echoing his words and validating his mission. Confirmation of his prophethood also comes, Nursi says, in past revelations, as well as in the testimony provided not only by his own instances of wonder working but also by those who witnessed his qualities first-hand. Just as that luminous proof of Divine unity is affirmed by the unanimity and consensus of those two wings, so do hundreds of indications in the revealed scriptures, like the Torah and the Bible, and the thousands of signs that appeared before the beginning of his mission, and the well-known news given by the voices from the Unseen and the unanimous

238

  The Quran and Muhammad testimony of the soothsayers, the indications of the thousands of his miracles like the Splitting of the Moon, and the justice of Shari‘a all confirm and corroborate him. So too, in his person, his laudable morals, which were at the summit of perfection; and in his duties, his complete confidence and elevated qualities, which were of the highest excellence, and his extraordinary fear of God, worship, seriousness and fortitude, which demonstrated the strength of his belief, and his total certainty and his complete steadfastness, - these all show as clearly as the sun how utterly faithful he was to his cause. 106

There is general consensus among most Muslims that the coming of Muhammad was foreshadowed in previous scriptures such as the Torah and the Gospels. In his Risāla-i H .  amīdiyya, H .   usayn Jisrī mentions over a hundred such indications; according to Nursi, if this many had remained “after the texts had become corrupted, there must have surely been many explicit mentions before.”107 Whether the ‘corruption’ (tah. rīf) of the previous scriptures pertains to the texts themselves or to their interpretations is still an open question; Nursi uses the term ambiguously and leaves his own position open to conjecture. However, whether or not the Torah and the Gospels are not as they were when first revealed is not really the issue here, for even in their present state, Muslim scholars purport to have found numerous instances in those scriptures in which the coming of Muhammad is foretold.108 For Nursi, these indications, together with his miracles and the testimony to his virtues given by those around him and recorded in his Traditions, provide evidence of the veracity of Muhammad’s prophethood. Further evidence, says Nursi, can be found in the profundity of Muhammad’s message and the fact that he was able to address successfully the kind of existential questions that no-one in his era had been able to answer. So let us imagine ourselves travelling back to the Arabian peninsula during the ‘Era of Bliss’. In our mind’s eye we shall see him at his duties and visit him. Look! We see a person distinguished by his fine character and beautiful form. In his hand is a miraculous book and on his tongue a truthful address; he is delivering a pre-eternal sermon to all mankind, indeed, to man, jinn and the angels, and to all beings. He solves and expounds the strange riddle of the mystery of the world’s creation; he discovers and solves the abstruse talisman which is the mystery of the universe; and he provides convincing and satisfying answers to the three awesome and difficult questions that are asked of all beings and have always bewildered and occupied minds: “Where do you come from? What are you doing here? What is your destination?” 109

That Muhammad was able to solve the “strange riddle of the mystery of the world’s creation” through his delivery of the revelation is ample proof for Nursi of his specialness and his prophetic credibility. With the advent of Muhammad, Nursi says, the world, which was hitherto immersed in the darkness of ignorance and misunderstanding, became enlightened and meaningful. See! He spreads such a Light of truth that if you look at the universe as being outside the luminous sphere of his truth and guidance, you see it to be like a place of general mourning, and beings strangers to one another and hostile, and inanimate beings to be like ghastly corpses and living creatures like orphans weeping at the blows of death and separation. Now look! Through the Light he spreads, that place of universal mourning

239

The Qur’an Revealed  has been transformed into a place where God’s Names and praises are recited in joy and ecstasy. The foreign, hostile beings have become friends and brothers. While the dumb, dead inanimate creatures have all become familiar officials and docile servants. And the weeping, complaining orphans are seen to be either reciting God’s Names and praises or offering thanks at being released from their duties.110

For Nursi, then, Muhammad is the hermeneutical key which unlocks the ‘talisman’ which is the mystery of the universe and transforms what was previously a dark domain of blind chance and futility into a light-filled gallery of Divine signs and symbols, all signifying the wisdom of its Creator: For through his light, the motion and movement of the universe and its variations, changes and transformations cease being meaningless, futile and the playthings of chance; they rise to being dominical missives, pages inscribed with the signs of creation, mirrors to the Divine Names, and the world itself becomes a book of the Eternally Besought One’s wisdom. Man’s boundless weakness and impotence make him inferior to all other animals, and his intelligence, an instrument for conveying grief, sorrow and sadness, makes him more wretched, yet when he is illumined with that light, he rises above all animals and all creatures. Through entreaty, his illuminated impotence, poverty and intelligence make him a petted monarch; due to his complaints, he becomes a spoiled vicegerent of the earth. That is to say, if it were not for the light of Muhammad, the universe and man and all things would be nothing. Yes, certainly such a person is necessary in such a wondrous universe; otherwise the universe and firmaments would not be in existence. 111

The ‘Muhammadan light’, then, is what is shed on the previously unintelligible scrawls and scribbles of a universe seen as chaos, turning them into meaningful pages, lines and letters, all of which are written in the ink of the Divine Names and point to their Divine scribe. Muhammad’s mission gives meaning to a meaningless world, and it is in this sense that Nursi is able to talk about the cosmos being dependent for its existence on the light of the Prophet. He continues: Thus that being brings and announces the good news of eternal happiness; he is the discoverer and proclaimer of an infinite mercy, the herald and observer of the beauties of the sovereignty of dominicality, and the discloser and displayer of the treasures of the Divine Names. If you regard him in that way, that is, in regard to his being a worshipful servant of God, you will see him to be the model of love, the exemplar of mercy, the glory of mankind and the most luminous fruit of the tree of creation. While if you look in this way, that is, in regard to his Messengership, you see him to be the proof of God, the lamp of truth, the sun of guidance and the means to happiness. And look! His Light has lighted up from east to west like dazzling lightning, and half the earth and a fifth of mankind has accepted the gift of his guidance and preserved it like life itself. So how is it that our evil-commanding souls and satans do not accept with all its degrees the basis of all that this being claimed, namely, There is no god but God? 112

Further proof of the authenticity of Muhammad’s mission, Nursi avers, was his ability to lead the people of the Arabian peninsula from what he describes as savagery and transform them into the leaders of one of the greatest civilisations in existence.

240

  The Quran and Muhammad Now, consider how, eradicating in no time at all their evil, savage customs and habits to which they were fanatically attached, he decked out the various wild, unyielding peoples of that broad peninsula with all the finest virtues, and made them teachers of all the world and masters to the civilized nations. See, it was not an outward domination, for he conquered and subjugated their minds, spirits, hearts and souls. He became the beloved of hearts, the teacher of minds, the trainer of souls, the ruler of spirits. You know that a small habit like cigarette smoking among a small nation can be removed permanently only by a powerful ruler with great effort. But look! This Being removed numerous ingrained habits from intractable, fanatical large nations with slight outward power and little effort in a short period of time, and in their place he so established exalted qualities that they became as firm as if they had mingled with their very blood. He achieved very many extraordinary feats like this. 113

To those who refuse to see the achievements of the Prophet during the “era of bliss” as testimony to his prophethood, Nursi issues a challenge. Let them each take a hundred philosophers to the Arabian peninsula today, he says, and allow them to strive for a hundred years. Would they, he asks, be able to carry out in that time even a hundredth of what Muhammad achieved in a single year? That Muhammad was able to transform the preIslamic ‘era of ignorance’ into the ‘era of bliss’ - a feat unrepeatable today – is for Nursi testimony not only to Muhammad’s own personal aptitude and charisma but also to the truth of his mission. It was also testimony, Nursi claims, to Muhammad’s truthfulness and integrity – qualities which were acknowledged even by his enemies. Had he been a false prophet, Nursi says, it is unfeasible to imagine that his imposture would not have been revealed. For even an insignificant man of small standing among a small community in a disputed matter of small importance cannot tell a small but shameful lie brazen-faced and without fear, and without displaying anxiety or disquiet enough to inform the enemies at his side of his deception. Now consider [Muhammad]; although he undertook a tremendous task which required an official of great authority and great standing and a situation of great security, can any contradiction at all be found in the words he uttered among a community of great size in the face of great hostility concerning a great cause and matters of great significance, with great ease and freedom, without fear, hesitation, diffidence or anxiety, with pure sincerity, great seriousness, and in an intense, elevated manner that angered his enemies? Is it at all possible that any trickery should have been involved? God forbid! It is naught but Revelation inspired.2 The truth does not deceive, and one who perceives the truth is not deceived. His way, which is truth, is free of deception. How could a fancy appear to one who sees the truth to be the truth, and deceive him? 114

For Nursi, then, Muhammad is not deceived. And if he is not deceived, those who hear his message should not be deluded into thinking that he is deceived, particularly given his reputation for truthfulness and the nature of the things that his mission makes known. For what curiosity-arousing, attractive, necessary and awesome truths he shows, what matters he proves! You know that what impels man most is curiosity. Even if it were to be said to you: “If you give half of your life and property, someone will come from the Moon and Jupiter and tell you all about them. He will also tell you the truth about your future

241

The Qur’an Revealed  and what will happen to you,” you would be bound to give them if you had any curiosity at all. Whereas that Being tells of a Monarch Who is such that in His realm, the moon flies round a moth like a fly, and the moth, the earth, flutters round a lamp, and the lamp, the sun, is merely one lamp among thousands in one guest-house out of thousands of that Monarch. Also, he speaks truly about a future in comparison with which the future in this world is like a tiny mirage. And he tells most seriously of a happiness in comparison with which all worldly happiness is but a fleeting flash of lightning in relation to an eternal sun. For sure, wonders await us under the apparent veil of the universe which is thus strange and perplexing. So one thus wonderful and extraordinary, a displayer of marvels, is necessary to tell of its wonders. It is apparent from that being’s conduct that he has seen them, and sees them, and says that he has seen them. And he instructs us most soundly concerning what the God of the heavens and the earth, Who nurtures us with His bounties, wants and desires of us. Everyone should therefore leave everything and run to and heed this being who teaches numerous other necessary and curiosity-arousing truths like these, so how is it that most people are deaf and blind, and mad even, so that they do not see this truth, and they do not listen to it and understand it? 115

Wonderful truths require one whose truthfulness is at the level of the wondrous to proclaim them, says Nursi, and it is clear that Muhammad is such a being. For not only is he the recipient of the revelation which makes these truths known, he also experiences them and interprets them, and makes them accessible to the rest of creation in accordance with their different levels of understanding. What is difficult to understand, Nursi says, is why most people are either unwilling to consider the revelation and ponder its message. The refusal of the vast majority to embrace the teachings of Muhammad is all the more mystifying, Nursi says, when one considers that he is in one sense the means of their salvation: For just as this being is an articulate proof and true evidence at the degree of the veracity of the unity of the Creator of beings, so too is he a decisive proof and clear evidence for the resurrection of the dead and eternal happiness. Yes, with his guidance he is the reason for eternal happiness coming about and is the means of attaining it. And through his prayers and supplications, he is the cause of its existence and reason for its creation.116

Not only, then, is Muhammad from the perspective of his being a near-perfect mirror to the Divine Names and the reason for the creation of the phenomenal world, he is also the reason for the coming into existence of the realms of the hereafter. For eternal happiness – and, indeed, eternal perdition – obtains only as result of the response of mankind to the guidance that he brings. Furthermore, his supplication is deemed to be the most excellent of all supplications, and is in a sense representative of them. For this being prays with a prayer so supreme that it is as if the Arabian Peninsula and the earth itself perform their prayers through his, and offer entreaties. See, he also entreats in a congregation so vast that it is as if all the luminous and perfected members of mankind from the time of Adam till our age and until the end of time are following him and saying “Amen” to his supplications. And see! He is beseeching for a need so universal that not only the dwellers of the earth, but also those of the heavens, and all beings, join in his prayer, declaring: “Yes! O our Sustainer! Grant it to us! We too want it!” And he

242

  The Quran and Muhammad supplicates with such want, so sorrowfully, in such a loving, yearning and beseeching fashion that he brings the whole cosmos to tears, leading them to join in his prayer.117

According to the Quran, God would pay no attention to man if it were not for his supplication (du‘ā), for all that man has, and man is, comes to him through the admission of impotence that he makes either verbally, through entreaty, or through the tongue of mute eloquence. And that which man desires more than anything else, Nursi says, and which Muhammad prays for with such earnestness, is salvation and immortality. However much he tries to deny it, man is never far away from the acute awareness of his own finitude and limitation, and ultimately the only way that he can transcend this existential dilemma is to invest in hope of the hereafter, which is in reality obtainable through supplication alone. Muhammad, with his universal supplication, embodies the hopes and needs of all mankind, and teaches others through his own mode of prayer exactly what to want and how to want it. Because the purpose and aim of his prayer is such, it raises man and the world, and all creatures, from the lowest of the low, from inferiority, worthlessness and uselessness to the highest of the high; that is to having value, permanence and exalted duties. And see! He seeks and pleads for help and mercy in a manner so elevated and sweet, it is as if he makes all beings and the heavens and the earth hear, and, bringing them to ecstasy, to exclaim: “Amen, O our God! Amen!” And see! He seeks his needs from One so Powerful, Hearing and Munificent, One so Knowing, Seeing and Compassionate, that He sees and hears the most secret need of the most hidden living being and its entreaties, accepts them, and has mercy on it. For He gives what is asked for, if only through the tongue of disposition. And He gives it in so Wise, Seeing and Compassionate a form that it leaves no doubt that that nurturing and regulation is particular to the All-Hearing and All-Seeing One, the Most Generous and Most Compassionate One. What does he want, this pride of the human race, who, taking behind him all the eminent of mankind, stands on top of the world and, raising up his hand, is praying? What is this unique being, who is truly the glory of the cosmos, seeking? Listen! He is seeking eternal happiness. He is asking for eternal life and to meet with God. He wants Paradise. And he wants all the Sacred Divine Names, which display their beauty and decrees in the mirrors of beings. Yes, just as his Messengership was the reason for the opening of this place of examination and trial, so too his worship and servitude to God were the reason for the opening of the next world.118

And finally, Nursi concludes his Nineteenth Word by bringing us back full circle, for that which proves the prophethood of Muhammad more than any other thing, he says, is the Quran itself, “that supreme miracle, which furnishes us with evidence so decisive that it leaves no need for further proof.” 119

243

Chapter Eight The Hereafter Introduction

The fact that the Quran often juxtaposes ‘belief in God’ with ‘belief in the Last Day’ shows exactly how central the question of the ‘hereafter’ is to the Quranic worldview. The ‘Last Day’ also constitutes one of the six ‘articles of belief ’, with almost a quarter of the Quran devoted to eschatology, and so its conceptual importance should not be underestimated. For the Quran, the life of man on earth represents only a frac­tion of his overall existence. Man’s sojourn here is alluded to almost as a tem­porary break in the loop of existence, necessitated by the fact that it is only by venturing outside the loop that man is able to understand that he is inside a loop in the first place. As far as his own existence is concerned, man’s life in this world is necessary because it enables him to understand the concept of eternity – the ultimate reason for his creation. But it also serves as a training ground in which he is prepared for the eventual transition, after death, to his permanent abode in the world to come, the realm of the ‘hereafter’. This preparation comes in the form of a life-long ‘examination’, in which man is ‘tested’ by God in order that his potential as God’s representative or ‘vicegerent’ be realised, and that the extent of his knowledge, love and worship of the Creator be made known. The world is thus like a metaphorical field, which man is encouraged to cultivate with knowledge, belief, submission and good deeds, in order to be able to reap the abundant harvest of eternal joy – proximity to God – in the hereafter. Viewed as such, this world would appear to be every bit as important as the world to come, simply by virtue of the fact that one’s position vis-à-vis God in the hereafter depends very much on the nature of one’s relationship with Him in the here-and­-now. Consequently, to claim that Islam is a ‘this-worldly’ religion is as misleading as to claim that it is ‘otherworldly’, for both stances disregard the fact that this world and the next are both parts of the same continuum of existence, albeit with very different terms of reference as far as their innate natures and external conditions are concerned. The locus classicus for Said Nursi’s treatment of the afterlife is his treatise Resurrection and the Hereafter, also known as the Tenth Word. Written around 1924, the treatise appeared

245

The Qur’an Revealed  at a time when the move towards secularisation in the new Turkish Republic was gaining momentum. The appearance of the treatise in print came at a time when the Council of Education was attempting to enshrine biological materialism as the default setting in the teaching of science throughout the country’s educational establishment; one of the ideas they were keen on promoting was the denial of bodily resurrection. Nursi would later claim that, even though he was unaware of the Council’s objectives at the time, the writing of the thesis was clearly ‘bestowed’ on him by God in order to provide a response to the machinations of those who would establish atheistic materialism as the cornerstone of all scientific enquiry and endeavour. Nursi’s methodology in Resurrection and the Hereafter is, like that in most of his work, taken from the Quran. The Quran appeals to human reason in its various attempts to demonstrate the reality and rationality of the hereafter, and the resurrection and judgement which precede it. The Quran insists that its followers deliberate upon God’s ‘signs’ before assenting to the truths indicated by them. Indeed, nowhere is the idea of blind acceptance of these fundamental principles sanctioned or tolerated: while the final leap is indeed ultimately a leap of faith, the run-up, as it were, is solely a matter for the intellect and the faculty of reason. How, then, does the Quran attempt to demonstrate the plausibility of the resurrection and the events which follow on from it? The Quran uses the ‘first creation’ of man – the fact that every individual has been brought into the world – to show that what has happened once can happen again, especially if it happens according to the creative will of God, for Whom all things are possible: See they not how God originates creation, then repeats it: truly that is easy for God. Say: ‘Travel through the earth and see how God did ori­ginate creation; so will God produce a later creation: for God has power over all things.’ 1

The Quran also alludes to the fact that the phenomenon of res­urrection is prefigured in this world: ‘mini resurrections’ occur in the natural world all of the time, from the partial death of trees in winter and their resuscitation the following spring, to the con­stant ‘death’ and ‘revivification’ of the cells of the body. The Quran uses the example of the desert, whose parched dead earth springs to lush green life with each merciful drop of rain: It is He Who sendeth the winds like heralds of glad tidings, going before His mercy: when they have carried the heavy-laden clouds, We drive them to a land that is dead, make rain to descend thereon, and produce every kind of harvest therewith: thus shall We raise up the dead: perchance ye may remember.2

Yet however compelling the allegories, parables and similitudes of the Quran may be, the fact remains that the ‘proofs’ it offers with regard to the existence of the hereafter are by definition scriptural proofs, acceptance of which depends for the most part – although not entirely – on one’s having established for oneself the textual validity of the revelation and the authority of its evidence. Despite the fact that neither can be established empirically, trying to prove the existence of a hereafter differs considerably from trying to prove that the cosmos has a creator; as far as the latter is concerned, we have at least a series of effects in front of us as a basis from which we may argue to a cause, or to causes, regardless of whether we conclude

246

  The Hereafter that the creator is God. But in the case of the hereafter there are no effects visible, and thus to argue from effect to cause is impossible. That the cosmos should have a cause is a rational proposition, but it is difficult to say the same thing about the hereafter. In this sense, the notion of the hereafter belongs, like many other propositions pertaining to the realm of belief, firmly in the domain of the nonrational. However, non-rational is not the same as irrational, which denotes something that cannot in any way, shape or form sit comfortably with reason. That which is non-rational may not be provable empirically, but it may be experienced and understood within its own frame of reference. Love, for example, is non-rational, but it is certainly not irrational – its tendency to provoke irrational behaviour at times notwithstanding. Similarly, the existence of angels is not something which can be demonstrated practically, but the notion is not a fundamentally irrational one. For a circle to be a square and remain a circle, however, is not non-rational: it is irrational, or what may be described as an aberration of the rational.3 Historically, the hereafter has been a theological and philosophical problematic for a number of scholars, including some of the most renowned. Ibn Sina’s statements on the hereafter, for example, are notoriously ambiguous, for he seems to maintain on the one hand that bodily resurrection is possible and on the other that immortality is restricted to immaterial souls.4 The difficulty he had in accepting the notion of bodily resurrection has given rise to the popular – but completely false – assumption that he denies the existence of a hereafter altogether, although this is clearly not the case. What he does deny, however, is that the resurrection, the final judgement and the existence of an eternal heaven and eternal hell can be understood by rational criteria. On this particular point, Nursi would appear to be in agreement with Ibn Sina. However, to say that the hereafter cannot be understood by rational criteria is one thing, and to say that it cannot be understood at all is another thing entirely. If it were completely inaccessible on any level at all to the human intellect, surely it would have been categorised, like the rulings of jurisprudence, as things in which one is justified in believing blindly, through imitation (taqlīd)? But the hereafter is one of the fundamentals of belief (us.ūl al-īmān), all of which require belief that is attained through investigation (tah. qīq), and not through imitation. The use of reason, then, must be indispensible to the Muslim’s understanding of the hereafter. So how does Nursi approach what seems to be, both ontologically and epistemologically, a rather intractable problem? Like the Quran, Nursi appeals to his readers’ powers of reason by attempting, through the use of allegory and a number of theological arguments, to make what is clearly non-rational seem reasonable. For what seems devoid of reason at first glance can often be shown to possess a rational basis over time – a fact of which the Quranic narrative of Moses and Khidr provides ample evidence.5 Let us now turn to Nursi’s treatise on the hereafter to see exactly how he fashions his arguments, and why.

Twelve indications of the hereafter: an allegory

Nursi begins his discourse on resurrection and the hereafter with an extended allegory, designed, as he himself puts it, to provide ‘a discussion of resurrection and the hereafter in simple and common language, and in a straightforward style’.

247

The Qur’an Revealed  Once two men were travelling through a land as beautiful as paradise. Looking around them, they saw that the people had left open the doors of their homes and shops, and were not paying attention to guarding them. Money and property were readily accessible, as though they had no owners. One of the two travellers – a most foolish and mindless individual - grasped hold of all that he fancied, taking that to which he had no right. Following his baser inclinations, he committed every kind of injustice and abomination. And none of the people of that land moved to stop him. His companion, however, said: “What on earth are you doing? You will be punished, and I will be dragged into misfortune along with you. All of what you have stolen belongs to the state. The people of this land, including even the children, are all soldiers or government servants. It is because they are at present civilians that they have not apprehended you. But the laws here are strict. The king has installed telephones everywhere and his agents are everywhere. Go quickly, and try to put things right.” But the foolish man said in his obstinacy: “No, it is not state property; it belongs instead to some endowment, and has no clear or obvious owner. Anyone can make use of it as he sees fit. I see no reason to deny myself the use of these fine things. I will not believe that they have an owner unless I see him with my own eyes.” He continued to speak in this way, justifying his actions with much sophistry, and a heated debate ensued. “Who is the king here?” said the foolish man. “I doubt there is one, because I can’t see him.” “Listen,” said his companion, “every village must have its headman; everything down to even the tiniest needle must have its manufacturer and craftsman. And, as you know, every letter must be written by someone. How, then, can it be that a kingdom as well-ordered as this should have no ruler? And how can so much wealth have no owner, when it is obvious that every hour a train arrives filled with precious and artful gifts, as though sent from the realm of the unseen? And what about all the announcements and proclamations, all the seals and stamps found on all those goods, all the flags waving in every corner of the kingdom - can they all be ownerless? You know very little of the language here and so you’re unable to read the things which are written here; furthermore, you refuse to ask those who know the language to read them to you. So pay attention while I read to you the king’s supreme decree.” The empty-headed man retorted: “Okay, so let’s suppose that there is a king. How is my taking a tiny amount of his wealth going to harm him? Will his treasury decrease as a result? Besides, I see nothing here in the way of prison or punishment.” His companion replied: “This land is a place of exhibition for the wonderful royal arts of the ruler. But it is also a training ground and a temporary caravanserai, with no real foundations. Don’t you see that ever day a company of travellers arrives as another departs? This place is being constantly emptied and filled. Soon, however, the whole land will be transformed, and all of its inhabitants will depart for another, more lasting realm. And there they will all be given their due, rewarded or punished for their deeds here.” The treacherous fool retorted rebelliously: “I don’t believe it. Is it at all possible that a whole land should be destroyed and transferred to another realm?” His trustworthy friend replied: “Since you are so obstinate, let me show you, with twelve out of the innumerable proofs available, that there is indeed a ‘supreme tribunal’, a realm of reward and munificence and a realm of punishment and incarceration; let me

248

  The Hereafter prove to you that just as this world is partially emptied every day, a time will come when it will be emptied completely and destroyed.” 6

The paradisiacal land in the allegory is the world (dunyā), which Nursi portrays as a wellordered kingdom whose ruler, though absent from the eyes of his subjects, has left his mark everywhere. All of the wealth of the kingdom belongs to him and his subjects are merely his stewards, tasked with services that they carry out in his name. The artistry and munificence of the king is exhibited everywhere in the form of countless wonderful artefacts and instances of generosity: every day, Nursi, says, a train arrives into the kingdom, filled with precious items for the use of the people there, as though from nowhere. This train, Nursi explains, indicates the cycle of the seasons, and in particular the spring, which brings with it numerous bounties, all produced in an amazingly short space of time, from sources invisible to the human eye. That this wealth should be without an owner – that a wellordered kingdom such as this should be without a king – is thus unthinkable, Nursi says; only the foolish would close their eyes to such a self-evident reality. Which brings us to the two companions in the story. The foolish man, Nursi explains, represents the instinctual soul (nafs al-ammāra), followers of the ‘line of philosophy’ and the people of unbelief; his level-headed, trustworthy companion represents the heart (qalb), followers of the Quran, and the community of Islam. The first traveller’s foolishness is seen to inhere in his unwillingness to countenance the existence of a ruler, despite obvious signs of order, governance and authority. A concomitant of this is that he believes that he may behave however he wishes, with no fear of admonishment, reprisal or retribution. His wantonness is exemplified in particular by his misappropriation of goods and riches which, he believes, have no obvious owner; even if there were an owner, he scoffs, prisons and punishment seem to be non-existent, and thus one may act however one wishes with apparent impunity. Inevitably, when his level-headed friend explains that punishment for such transgressions are deferred to a ‘supreme tribunal’ in a different, currently hidden realm, to which beings are despatched daily, and to which all of the subjects of the king will be sent in the end, the fool refuses to believe. Nursi then uses the level-headed traveller to spell out, from twelve ‘aspects’, precisely why the notion of a ‘supreme tribunal’ and an enduring realm beyond the present one is in accord with reason and thus not to be rejected lightly. The first aspect: Is it at all possible that in any kingdom, and particularly so splendid a kingdom as this, there should be no reward for those who serve obediently and no punishment for those who rebel? Reward and punishment are virtually non-existent here; there must therefore be a Supreme Tribunal somewhere else.7

Nursi’s contention here is that in a land that is clearly ruled as magnificently as this one is, surely those who serve their ruler faithfully should be rewarded and those who rebel punished accordingly? However, the fact is that despite the good governance of the king and the well-ordered way in which affairs are administered, reward and punishment are not always meted out proportionately, and in some cases are totally absent. For true justice to be done, then, Nursi says, there must be a ‘supreme tribunal’ (mah. kama-i kubrā) in another realm where all people receive exactly what they deserve. This is obviously an attempt – a

249

The Qur’an Revealed  highly attenuated attempt, it must be said – at what may be termed an ‘argument from ultimate justice’. Had Nursi left it at this, it would arguably have been open to serious criticism, but the second and third ‘aspects’ serve to flesh out the first and provide muchneeded clarification. The second aspect: Look at the organization and administration of this kingdom! See how everyone, including the poorest and the weakest, is provided with perfect sustenance. The best care is taken of the sick. Delicious foods, jewel-encrusted decorations, embroidered garments, splendid feasts - all are to be found here. See how everyone pays due attention to his duties, with the exception of fools such as yourself. No one transgresses his bounds by as much as an inch. The greatest of all men is engaged in modest and obedient service, with an attitude of fear and awe. The ruler of this kingdom must possess, then, great generosity and compassion, as well as great dignity, exalted awesomeness and honour. Now generosity requires liberality; compassion cannot dispense with beneficence; and awesomeness and honour make it imperative that the discourteous be chastised. But not even a thousandth part of what that generosity and awesomeness require is to be seen here. The oppressor retains his power, and the oppressed, his humiliation, as they both depart from this realm. Their affairs are, then, left to the same Supreme Tribunal of which we speak.8

From Nursi’s second ‘aspect’, we see that in this allegorical kingdom, order is the general rule. The people’s needs for food, clothing and shelter are met more than adequately and, for the most part, the subjects of the king carry out their duties conscientiously, mindful of the laws of the land and careful not to step out of line. From the ample provision of sustenance, Nursi infers that the ruler must be someone who is both compassionate and merciful towards his subjects; from this, and from their respect for the rule of law and their concomitant acknowledgement of their ruler’s sovereignty, we are able to infer that most people in the land know the difference between right and wrong and thus may be said to have an innate sense of justice. Nevertheless, perfect justice is conspicuous by its absence here: it often happens that the good leave this realm unrewarded while the rebellious depart unpunished. The fact that the king is, by virtue of his generosity and compassion, clearly a just ruler must, Nursi argues, mean that recompense and retribution are for some reason deferred to another realm and another time. Having alluded to the sense of justice that is prevalent among the people of the realm, in his exposition of the ‘third aspect’, Nursi addresses explicitly not only the issue of the justice of the ruler but also that of his wisdom. The third aspect: See with what lofty wisdom and order affairs are managed, and with what true justice and balance transactions are effected! Now a wise polity requires that those who seek the protection of the state should receive favour, and justice demands that the rights of subjects be preserved, so that the splendour of the state should not suffer. But here in this land, not a thousandth part of the requirements of such wisdom and justice is fulfilled; for example, fools such as yourself usually leave this realm unpunished. So again we say, matters are postponed for the consideration of a Supreme Tribunal.9

250

  The Hereafter The ‘third aspect’ continues Nursi’s elaboration of his ‘argument from ultimate justice’. The focus here is largely on justice (‘adāla) in the sense of equilibrium (mīzān): just as the cosmos epitomises balance through the harmonious interworking of its constituent parts, the allegorical kingdom is for the most part a microcosmic reflection of creation as a whole. Now both wisdom and justice demand that those who trample on the rights of others be upbraided for their transgressions, yet the fact still remains that many leave this realm as though immune from punishment. Again, Nursi concludes that since the requirement of justice is that people be rewarded or punished precisely in accordance with their acts and behaviours in this realm, their going unrewarded or unpunished must point inexorably to another realm in which all people receive their just deserts. While this conclusion is no different to that of the ‘second aspect’, there is another variable involved here, and that is the attribute of wisdom. Although Nursi does not spell this out explicitly, the fact that the justice of the king points to the existence of another realm where reward and punishment are meted out as they should be, together with Nursi’s depiction of the king as an inherently wise ruler, suggests that there is a wisdom behind the absence of perfect justice in this temporary realm. In other words, if the righteous go unrewarded and the rebellious go unpunished, it is for a reason. This reason may not be immediately evident to those whose rights are trampled on, but the fact that the ruler is possessed of wisdom suggests that there is a reasonable explanation. Indeed, it may be argued that without the variable of wisdom, the ‘argument from ultimate justice’ would have remained problematic. That is not to say, of course, that it is not still so; however, one must bear in mind here that Nursi appears to be predicating his belief in the existence of another realm not on any presupposition of the existence of God, but rather on the existence of a human moral instinct – an innate feel for justice, both on the part of the ruler and the ruled – which call for justice in the long-term, even if it be deferred to another place and time. We shall, of course, return to the ‘argument from ultimate justice’ in the second half of this chapter, when Nursi approaches the issue of the hereafter from a purely theistic perspective. Suffice to say that these first three ‘aspects’ lay the foundations of that argument and, as such, appear perfectly acceptable within their own limited frames of reference. In the ‘fourth aspect’, Nursi changes direction and focuses on the perfections of the king himself, the manifestations of which cannot be fully appreciated in a limited realm by subjects who are themselves subject to finitude. The fourth aspect: Look at these innumerable, peerless jewels that are displayed here, these unparalleled dishes laid out like a banquet! They demonstrate that the ruler of these lands possesses absolute generosity and an inexhaustible treasury. Now such generosity and such a treasury deserve and require a bounteous display that should be eternal and include all possible objects of desire. They further require that all who come as guests to partake of that display should be there eternally and not suffer the pain of death and separation. For just as the cessation of pain is pleasurable, so too is the cessation of pleasure painful! 10

The existence of numberless wondrous bounties, cargoes of which arrive and depart daily, suggests that the ruler possesses a treasury so vast that its contents could not possibly be displayed to full effect in a limited realm or in the brief lifetimes of its people. A treasury

251

The Qur’an Revealed  of bounties demands to be displayed, and an endless treasury requires a display that is also endless. Furthermore, Nursi argues, the compassion and generosity of the ruler, which are evidently absolute, require that those who are witness to the temporary display in this limited realm should also be witness to the eternal display in the permanent realm which must exist beyond this one. For to give these witnesses, whose desire for such bounties knows no limit, only a mere glimpse of the treasury before despatching them to non-existence would be inconsonant with the mercifulness of the ruler, the all-encompassing nature of which has already been established. The eternity of the treasury thus necessitates the eternity of all those whose gaze falls upon its manifestation in this present, limited realm. The fact that the beauty which imbues this treasury is hidden also requires this: As for concealed and peerless beauty, it too requires to see and be seen, or rather to behold itself in two ways. The first consists of contemplating itself in different mirrors, and the second of contemplating itself by means of the contemplation of enraptured spectators and astounded admirers. Hidden beauty wishes, then, to see and be seen, to contemplate itself eternally and be contemplated without cease. It desires also permanent existence for those who gaze upon it in awe and rapture. For eternal beauty can never be content with a transient admirer; moreover, an admirer destined to perish without hope of return will find his love turning to enmity whenever he imagines his death, and his admiration and respect will turn to contempt. It is in man’s nature to hate the unknown and the unaccustomed. Now everyone leaves this caravanserai very quickly and vanishes, having seen only a light or a shadow of the perfection and beauty for no more than a moment, without in any way being satiated. Hence, it is necessary that he should go towards an eternal realm where he will contemplate that beauty and perfection.11

The bounties bestowed upon this perishable world are, Nursi has argued, an indication of the existence of a boundless treasure-trove of beauty that is hidden from view; indeed, they are in a sense a manifestation or reflection of it. For hidden beauty, Nursi argues, cannot remain hidden: it is in the very nature of beauty to want to display itself. And if that beauty is absolute, it will by its very nature display itself eternally, to – and through – countless eternal ‘mirrors’ which are created to reflect it. If the allegory was not transparent before, it certainly becomes so now, for it is clear that Nursi is alluding here to the ‘hidden treasure’ Tradition – one which lies at the heart of his mystical-theological worldview: I was a Treasure but was not known. So I loved to be known, and I created the creatures and made Myself known to them. Then they came to know Me.

Hidden beauty, Nursi says, contemplates itself in two ways: it regards itself in the ‘mirrors’ it creates, and in which it is reflected; and it gazes upon itself through the contemplation of those who hold that beauty in awe. Thus man and his countless fellow beings in the cosmos constitute numberless ‘mirrors’ in which all created beings – including man himself – may admire and make known that which is reflected there. Furthermore, it is also in those mirrors that God is able to observe His own beauty, together with all of His attributes of perfection. Now since God’s attributes of perfection are absolute and eternal, His desire is also to be admired eternally. And thus just as the existence of God requires ‘mirrors’, the

252

  The Hereafter eternal existence of Divine beauty requires eternal ‘mirrors’. It is inconceivable, then, Nursi argues, that God should create ‘mirrors’ which do not extend beyond the confines of this limited realm. The existence of eternal ‘mirrors’ connotes the eternal existence of man, which in turn requires an eternal realm in which the display of God’s absolute beauty, and man’s everlasting contemplation of it, may take place. In the ‘fifth aspect’, Nursi’s line of argument again takes a different turn: The fifth aspect: See, it is evident from all these matters that this peerless being is possessed of most great mercy. For he causes aid to be extended to every victim of misfortune, answers every question and petition; and mercifully fulfils with perfect benevolence the lowliest need of his lowliest subject. Now pay attention, for a great meeting is taking place here. All of the nobles of the kingdom are assembled, and among them there is a most exalted commander, bearing numerous medals, who is delivering a discourse. In it he is requesting certain things from that compassionate monarch. All of those present are of one voice with him, saying: “Yes, we too desire the same!” Now listen to the words of that noble commander, favoured and decorated by his monarch: “Your majesty, you are one who constantly nurtures us with his bounty! Reveal to us the source of these examples and shadows you have shown us! Draw us nigh to your seat of rule; do not let us perish in these deserts! Take us into your presence and have mercy on us! Feed us there on the delicious bounty you have allowed us to taste here! Do not torment us with desperation and banishment! Do not leave your yearning, thankful and obedient subjects to their own devices; do not cause them to be annihilated!” 12

The king’s most esteemed commander is petitioning his monarch to reveal the source of all the bounties that have been showered on mankind. He is asking for access to the hidden treasury which lies beyond the confines of this limited realm, for to be given only a glimpse of the reflection of that source and then to be despatched to nothingness would be unimaginably cruel, and completely at odds with the innate compassion and generosity of the king. In short, the commander, who clearly enjoys the king’s confidence, is asking for nothing less than immortality. Nursi’s argument here is not difficult to discern. Given that the king meets the needs of his lowliest of subjects, is it at all likely that he would ignore the entreaties of his most trusted commander? Would it be in keeping with the king’s beneficence if he were to respond to the trivial requests made by him of his ordinary subjects yet block his ears to the supplication of the noblest commoner in the land? Nursi’s response is that it would clearly be at odds with the king’s justice, which necessitates fulfilling the legitimate desires of his obedient subjects. Moreover, the purpose of that commander is the purpose of all men, and its fulfilment is required by the pleasure, the compassion and the justice of the king. And it is a matter of ease for him, not difficulty, causing him less difficulty than the transient places of enjoyment contained in the caravanserai of the world. Having spent so much effort on these places of witnessing that will last only five or six days, and on the foundation of this kingdom, in order to demonstrate instances of his power, he will, without doubt, display at his seat of rule true treasures, perfections and skills in such a manner, and open before

253

The Qur’an Revealed  us such spectacles that our intellects will be astonished. Those sent to this field of trial will not, then, be left to their own devices; palaces of bliss or dungeons await them.13

The desire for immortality, Nursi says, is part of mankind’s creational make-up and thus common to all, from the lowliest subject in the realm to the most exalted. Furthermore, the provision of an eternal realm is no more difficult for the king than the provision of the temporary abode; indeed, it is necessitated not only by the absolute nature of his beauty, generosity and mercy, but also by the fact that he is solicitous to the needs and requests of all of his subjects. In the ‘sixth aspect’, Nursi infers the existence of a permanent realm from the fact that the temporary abode is not just a caravanserai but also a training ground: The sixth aspect: Come now, look! All these imposing railways, planes, machines, warehouses and exhibitions show that behind the veil an imposing monarch exists and governs. Such a monarch requires subjects worthy of himself. But now you see all his subjects gathered in a caravanserai for wayfarers, a caravanserai that is filled and emptied each day. It can also be said that his subjects are now gathered in a testing-ground for the sake of manoeuvres, and this ground also changes hourly. Again, we may say that all his subjects stay in an exhibition-hall for a few minutes to behold specimens of the monarch’s beneficence, valuable products of his miraculous art. But the exhibition itself changes each moment. Now this situation shows conclusively that beyond the caravanserai, the testing-ground, the exhibition, there are permanent palaces, lasting abodes and treasuries full of the pure and elevated originals of the samples and shapes we see in this world. It is for the sake of these that we exert ourselves here. Here we labour and there we receive our reward. A form and degree of felicity suited to everyone’s capacity awaits us there.14

Having already argued for the existence of a permanent realm beyond this perishable one, and for a source of all of the bounties which appear and disappear continuously during the brief life of this temporary abode, Nursi then likens the land in the allegory to a place of test and trial. Man is there not only to admire the ever-changing wonders which are displayed to him, but also to exert himself – to seek his livelihood through hard work and to earn his rewards by honest struggle. Yet livelihood and reward are also fleeting, Nursi argues, and thus it must be that man’s effort is intended in fact not for the ephemeral goods of this perishable realm but for the enduring goods of the hidden, everlasting realm beyond. There, everyone will attain a station that befits the efforts expended in this realm, in accordance with his or her innate capacity. Man’s future position – be it for good or for ill – depends, then, on how he approaches the ‘testing ground’ that is the limited realm of the present. In his ‘seventh aspect’, Nursi continues the theme of man’s test and trials: The seventh aspect: Come, let us walk a little and see what is to be found among these civilized people. See, in every place, at every corner, photographers are sitting and taking pictures. Everywhere there are scribes, writing things down. Everything is being recorded. They are registering all deeds and events, however insignificant or commonplace. Now look up at the tall mountain; there you see a supreme photographer installed, devoted to the service of the king; he is taking pictures of all that happens in the area.15 The king must, then, have issued this order: “Record all the transactions made and deeds performed in the kingdom.” In other words, that exalted personage is having a photographic record

254

  The Hereafter made of all events. The precise record he is keeping must without doubt be for the sake of one day calling his subjects to account. Now is it possible that an All-Wise, All-Preserving Being, who does not neglect the most banal doings of the lowest of his subjects, should not record the most significant deeds of the greatest among them, should not call them to account, should not reward and punish them? After all, it is those foremost among his subjects that perform deeds offensive to his glory, contrary to his pride and unacceptable to his compassion, and those deeds remain unpunished in this world. It must be, therefore, that their judgement is postponed to a Supreme Court.16

The fact that all things are being recorded photographically in this allegorical land must show, Nursi argues, that the king is keeping himself apprised of all of his subjects’ deeds, however apparently small and inconsequential. Everything is being stored on film and committed to electronic memory. Unless this is to be played back later, what is the point of its being filmed or photographed? One tapes a TV show on DVD to play it back at some future point, while school registers are filled in and class test scores stored so that the students may receive a report at the end of the year and proceed to the next level. The very fact that facts, deeds and events are being recorded indicates that they will be used as evidence at the ‘supreme tribunal’ which will take place in the future, and at which those who leave the present realm unrewarded and unpunished will receive what they deserve. At first glance, this particular ‘aspect’ is Nursi’s least convincing. Allegories are, after all, supposed to embody truths that are discernible in the real world, and while it is true that we live increasingly in a surveillance society where everything is recorded for posterity, the notion that the ultimate objective is the establishment of a supreme court is not one that springs to mind immediately. It is possible, however, that Nursi’s description of a land in which everything is photographed is somehow indicative of man’s urge to record even the most trivial of events, and that this urge may be fuelled by an instinctive need on man’s part to have evidence at hand should some future situation require it. In other words, the need to preserve events on film or in writing may stem ultimately from man’s innate sense of justice: to keep a record now means that he would, if the need arose, be in a position to set the record straight if his version of events were ever questioned in the future. The ‘eighth aspect’ sees Nursi invoking the constancy and scrupulousness of the monarch himself as proof of the existence of a hidden realm beyond this temporary abode. For while the monarch may not be seen in person, his words are there for everyone to deliberate upon, including his promises of reward and his threats of punishment. The eighth aspect: Come, let me read to you the decrees issued by that monarch. See, he repeatedly makes the following promises and dire threats: “I will take you from your present abode and bring you to the seat of my rule. There I shall bestow happiness on the obedient and imprison the disobedient. Destroying that temporary abode, I shall found a different realm containing eternal palaces and dungeons.” He can easily fulfil the promises he makes and it is moreover incompatible with his pride and his power that he should break his promise. So look! You assent to the claims of your mendacious imagination, your distraught intellect, your deceptive soul, but deny the words of a being who cannot be compelled in any fashion to break his promise,

255

The Qur’an Revealed  whose high stature does not admit any such faithlessness, and to whose truthfulness all visible deeds bear witness. Certainly you deserve a great punishment. You resemble a traveller who closes his eyes to the light of the sun and looks instead upon his own imagination. His fancy wishes to illuminate his awesomely dark path with the light of his brain, although it is no more than a glow-worm. Once that monarch makes a promise, he will most certainly fulfil it. Its fulfilment is most easy for him, and moreover most necessary for us and all things, as well as for him too and his kingdom. There is, therefore, a Supreme Court and a lofty felicity.17

If a person renowned for his trustworthiness and fidelity makes a promise, it is highly unlikely that he will break it. Given that the monarch of this allegorical land is not only compassionate and generous, but also possessed of numerous other attributes of perfection established in previous ‘aspects’, the notion that he might make futile promises and empty threats is, Nursi assures his readers, simply unthinkable. Those who would doubt an honest man, Nursi says, while trusting in the judgement of those who are more often than not wrong and deluded, is irrational. Moreover, the king neither loses nor gains by giving promises and issuing threats. For one who is beyond all need there can be no advantage to be had by making a promise and then breaking it, or by delivering dire warnings and not carrying them out. Nursi continues the theme of the monarch’s fidelity to promises in the ‘ninth aspect’, but from a slightly different angle: The ninth aspect: Come now! Look at the heads of these offices and groups.18 Each has a private telephone to speak personally with the king. Sometimes too they go directly to his presence. See what they say and unanimously report, that the monarch has prepared a most magnificent and awesome place for reward and punishment. His promises are emphatic and his threats most stern. His pride and dignity are such that he would in no way stoop to the abjectness inherent in the breaking of a promise. The bearers of this report, who are so numerous as to be universally accepted, further report with the strong unanimity of consensus that “the seat and headquarters of the lofty monarchy, some of whose traces are visible here, is in another realm far from here. The buildings existing in this testing-ground are but temporary, and will later be exchanged for eternal palaces. These places will change. For this magnificent and unfading monarchy, the splendour of which is apparent from its works, can in no way be founded or based on such transient, impermanent, unstable, insignificant, changing, defective and imperfect matters. It is based rather on matters worthy of it, eternal, stable, permanent and glorious.” There is, then, another realm, and of a certainty we shall go toward it.19

The ‘heads of these offices and groups’ are those intimates of the monarch who are in direct contact with the king, either by telephone or, on occasion, through personal presence at court. By virtue of the fact that these officials have been appointed by a king who is clearly wise and just, and whose confidence they enjoy, these officials also command the respect and trust of the people. Thus when they bring back reports from court which confirm the existence of a ‘supreme tribunal’ in the future, and of rewards and punishments which have been deferred to another realm, there is no reason why anyone should doubt them, particularly since they all appear to be in total agreement.

256

  The Hereafter Nursi himself explains that the ‘officials’ in question are the prophets and saints, all of whom concur on the fact that the present, transient realm is but a trace or reflection of a realm elsewhere that will endure forever, and where change, instability, lack, deficiency and imperfection will have no place. The ‘ninth aspect’ is therefore an ‘argument from authority’, in which Nursi adduces the presential knowledge of those privy either to Divine revelation or Divine inspiration to substantiate the case for a ‘supreme tribunal’ and the existence of the hereafter.20 In the ‘tenth aspect’, Nursi cites the numerous ‘resurrections’ which take place on a regular basis in this transient, ever-changing realm as an indication of the ‘great resurrection’ that will, it is claimed, take place once this temporary realm has been annihilated and transformed into a permanent abode. The tenth aspect: Come, today is the vernal equinox. Certain changes will take place and wondrous things will occur. On this fine spring day, let us go for a walk on the green plain adorned with beautiful flowers. See, other people are also coming towards it. There must be some magic at work, for buildings that were mere ruins have suddenly sprung up again here, and this once empty plain has become like a populous city. See, every hour it shows a different scene, just like a cinema screen, and takes on a different shape. But notice, too, that among these complex, swiftly changing and multifarious scenes perfect order exists, so that all things are put in their proper places. The imaginary scenes presented to us on the cinema screen cannot be as well-ordered as this, and millions of skilled magicians would be incapable of this artistry. This monarch whom we cannot see must, then, have performed even greater miracles.21

The vernal equinox, marking the first day of spring, heralds what for Nursi is clearly one of the most compelling creational indications of the existence of resurrection and the hereafter, for in the apparently miraculous revivification of the dead earth of winter and its rebirth in the form of a myriad varieties of new life - represented in the allegory by the sudden and unexpected reconstruction of ruined buildings - he sees evidence of an even greater event: the eventual death of all beings and their subsequent rebirth in a world transformed from its limited, transient state into a boundless, everlasting abode. Nursi has the levelheaded traveller in the story explain to his sceptical companion how such a transformation is possible. O foolish one! You ask: “How can this vast kingdom be destroyed and re-established somewhere else?” You see that every hour numerous changes and revolutions occur, just like the transfer from one realm to another that your mind will not accept. From this gathering in and scattering forth it can be deduced that a certain purpose is concealed within each visible and swift joining and separation, within every compounding and dissolving. Ten years of effort would not be devoted to a joining together destined to last no longer than an hour. So these circumstances we witness cannot be ends in themselves: they are a kind of parable of something beyond themselves, an imitation of it. That exalted being brings them about in miraculous fashion, so that they take shape and then merge, and the result is preserved and recorded, in just the same way that every aspect of a manoeuvre on the battleground is written down and recorded. This implies that proceedings at some great

257

The Qur’an Revealed  concourse and meeting will be based on what happens here. Further, the results of all that occurs here will be permanently displayed at some supreme exposition. All the transient and fluctuating phenomena we see here will yield the fruit of eternal and immutable form.22

Death and rebirth, decay and renewal, the separation of beings one from the other and their joining together and reconfiguration as new forms – all of these are part of the creational make-up of the cosmos, Nursi avers, and constitute countless examples of the principle of resurrection and rebirth. Since the cosmos is in flux, and change from one state to another is foundational, why, he asks, should it be so difficult for someone to accept that the whole of creation will one day be transformed into a realm where change and transience no longer hold sway, and where all that comes into existence and perishes here will be given a permanent form in a realm that is eternal? Indeed, what point is there in displaying beings – which are shadows or reflections of perfection – for an infinitesimally short period of time in this world, and tantalising those who witness them with the artistry involved, if that artistry is to be annihilated along with the world and not find permanence in a realm beyond? Nursi concludes by saying that all of the changes and variations that we see in this world are, then, “for the sake of a supreme happiness, a lofty tribunal, for the sake of exalted aims as yet unknown to us.” 23 The countless examples of change and regeneration in this world, therefore, are symbolic of the change and regeneration which will result in a world that is eternal, with eternal witnesses to the eternal beauty of its Creator. In its opening passage, the penultimate ‘aspect’ reconfirms the belief that for a kingdom as well-ordered as this to exist, its ruler must possess wisdom, compassion, justice and mercy beyond comprehension. The eleventh aspect: Come, my obstinate friend! Let us embark on a plane or a train travelling east or west, that is, to the past or the future. Let us see what miraculous works that being has accomplished in other places. Look, there are marvels on every hand like the dwellings, open spaces and exhibitions we see. But they all differ with respect to art and to form. Note well, however, what order betokening manifest wisdom, what indications of evident compassion, what signs of lofty justice, and what fruits of comprehensive mercy are to be seen in these transient dwellings, these impermanent open spaces, these fleeting exhibitions. Anyone not totally devoid of insight will understand with certainty that no wisdom can be imagined more perfect than his, no providence more beauteous than his, no compassion more comprehensive than his, and no justice more glorious than his.24

However, the transient nature of the world – the impermanence of its structures and the ephemeral nature of its displays of artistry – means that those attributes of perfection are caught only in glimpses. Absolute and eternal attributes of perfection demand structures and displays of artistry that are everlasting. If, for the sake of argument, as you imagine, no permanent abodes, lofty places, fixed stations, lasting residences or resident and contented population existed in the sphere of his kingdom; and if the truths of his wisdom, compassion, mercy and justice had no realm in which to manifest themselves fully (for this impermanent kingdom is no place for their

258

  The Hereafter full manifestation) - then we would be obliged to deny the wisdom we see, to deny the compassion we observe, to deny the mercy that is in front of our eyes, and to deny the justice the signs of which are evident. This would be as idiotic as denying the sun, the light of which we clearly see at midday.25

What Nursi is saying here is that wisdom, beauty and compassion cannot really be wisdom, beauty and compassion if they lead to annihilation and non-existence. If, as Nursi has been implying throughout his allegory, everything is imbued with purpose and looks to a future realm beyond this temporary abode, to cut everything short at death – both the individual deaths of sentient beings and the collective death of the cosmos – would turn that purposefulness to futility. To promise someone eternal life and then despatch them to eternal annihilation betokens not mercy and compassion but tyranny and cruelty of the most unimaginable kind. In this case we would also have to regard the one from whom proceed all these wise measures we see, all these generous acts, all these merciful gifts, as a vile gambler or treacherous tyrant (God forbid!). This would be to turn truth on its head. And turning a truth into its opposite is impossible, according to the unanimous testimony of all rational beings, excepting only the idiotic sophists who deny everything. There is, then, a realm apart from the present one. In it, there is a supreme tribunal, a lofty place of justice, an exalted place of reward, where all this compassion, wisdom, mercy and justice will be made fully manifest.26

In short, if there is no hereafter, Nursi argues, the wisdom in this world is not wisdom but futility; the beauty in this world is not beauty but sheer ugliness; and the compassion in this world is nothing but abject cruelty. Nursi continues the theme of purposefulness in his twelfth and final ‘aspect’: The twelfth aspect: Come, let us return now. We will speak with the chiefs and officers of these various groups, and looking at their equipment will inquire whether that equipment has been given them only for the sake of subsisting for a brief period in this realm, or whether it has been given for the sake of obtaining a long life of bliss in another realm. For example, let us look at the identity card and register of this officer. On his card, his rank, salary, duty, supplies and instructions are recorded. See, this rank has not been awarded him for just a few days; it may be given for a prolonged period. It says on his card: “You will receive so much salary on such-and-such a day from the treasury.” But the date in question will not arrive for a long time to come, after this realm has been vacated. Similarly, the duty mentioned on his card has not been given for this temporary realm, but rather for the sake of earning a permanent felicity in the proximity of the king. Then, too, the supplies awarded him cannot be merely for the sake of subsisting in this caravanserai of a few days’ duration; they can only be for the sake of a long and happy life. The instructions make it quite clear that he is destined for a different place, and that he is working for another realm. Now look at these registers. They contain instructions for the use and disposition of weapons and equipment. If there were no realm other than this, one exalted and eternal, that register and its categorical instructions and that identity card with its clear information would both be quite meaningless. Further, that respected officer, that noble

259

The Qur’an Revealed  commander, that honoured chief, would fall to a degree lower than that of all men; he would be more wretched, luckless, abased, afflicted, indigent and weak than everyone. Apply the same principle to everything. Whatever you look upon bears witness that after this transient world, another, eternal world exists. O friend! This temporary world is like a field. It is a place of instruction, a market. Without doubt a supreme tribunal and ultimate happiness will succeed it. If you deny this, you will be obliged also to deny the identity cards of all the officers, their equipment and their orders; in fact you will have to deny too all the order existing in the country, the existence of a government in it and all the measures that the government takes. Then you will no longer deserve the name of man or the appellation of conscious. You will be more of a fool than the sophists.27

With his military analogy, which is at times rather more laboured than it need be, Nursi is articulating a principle which numerous Muslim thinkers and mystics have invoked as being indicative of the necessity of an eternal realm. In the same way that the abundant supplies given to the soldier in the story are clearly intended to last him a considerable length of time rather than just one or two days, the capacities and potentialities that man possesses are clearly superfluous to requirements if a brief life in this limited realm is all that he has. As Nursi points out on numerous occasions in the Risale-i Nur, man is a creature who, through intellect and imagination, is able to embrace the whole of the cosmos and, as such, is endowed with the innate desire for everlasting life. The desire to live forever, to exist without imperfection, deficiency, instability and pain, indicate for Nursi the existence of an everlasting realm; were this not the case, to what end has man been given this desire? The hands, feet, eyes, ears and other members and organs of a foetus growing in its mother’s womb are superfluous to its requirements as far as life in the womb is concerned: they are clearly given not for use during those nine months of gestation but for use in another realm, the realm of the world outside the womb. In the same way, man possesses many faculties, capacities and abilities, the boundless extent of which far exceed his requirements in this fleeting temporal abode, clearly created as they are for a limitless, eternal realm where he will be able to give them full expression.

Conclusion to the ‘twelve aspects’

Arguing from twelve different but interconnected perspectives, Nursi attempts to show in his extended allegory that a transient, limited realm is not enough to display the attributes of a king whose generosity, compassion, wisdom and justice are absolute and all-encompassing, and that there must be a boundless and permanent realm in which the splendour and majesty of his power and beauty may be witnessed eternally. In the same way, then, he argues, it is unthinkable that the eternal Creator of this transient world would not also create an eternal realm; it is inconceivable that He would not change this magnificent yet transient cosmos into one which is everlasting, with everlasting witnesses to its majesty. Moreover, a world that is a ‘testing ground’ demands a realm in which the results of that ‘test’ and the objectives of creation are made manifest. It is at this point that Nursi leaves his allegory behind and adopts a completely different line of argumentation.

260

  The Hereafter

Nursi’s ‘argument from the Divine Names’: twelve ‘truths’ pointing to the existence of the hereafter

In the second section of his treatise Resurrection and the Hereafter, Nursi invokes the attributes and names of God directly as ‘proofs’ of the truths and realities of resurrection and the hereafter. This type of theological argument – the ‘argument from God’, for want of a better phrase – is obviously valid only within the frames of reference of someone who is already a believer, for the objective is to infer what are thought to be logical conclusions from a pre-established belief in God and His ‘Most Beautiful Names’. As Nursi points out, the existence of the hereafter is ‘difficult to comprehend rationally’: as a non-rational concept it is certainly not something which can be rendered reasonable unless the existence of God is established first. After all, without God it would be difficult, if not impossible, to argue for the existence of a hereafter in any meaningful sense of the word, which is why Nursi’s most vigorous arguments are ones which rest on purely theological assumptions. The ‘argument from theology’ may of course be criticized by non-Muslim logicians, who would say that one cannot use God as an argument for the hereafter – or, indeed, for anything - unless one has established previously that there is a God.28 Of course this criticism would not have perturbed Nursi in the least; indeed, he would have undoubtedly agreed that this is most certainly the case. However, his goal here is to demonstrate the rationality of the hereafter to believers, within their own frame of reference – namely their belief in God and the existence of His attributes of perfection. He does so through the exposition of the following twelve ‘truths’, which correspond approximately to the twelve ‘aspects’ in his extended allegory. It is to these ‘truths’ that we now turn. The first ‘truth’ approaches the issue through the ‘gate of Dominicality’ (rubūbiyya) and sovereignty (salt. ana), and through the manifestation of the Divine name ‘the Sustainer’ (rabb). Is it at all possible that the glory of God’s dominicality and His Divine sovereignty should create a cosmos such as this, in order to display His perfections, with such lofty aims and elevated purposes, without establishing a reward for those believers who through faith and worship respond to these aims and purposes? Or that He should not punish those misguided ones who treat His purposes with rejection and scorn? 29

Divine dominicality (rubūbiyya) denotes the provision of sustenance and the concomitant nurturing of creation in order that it may reach its optimum level of material and spiritual growth. Sovereignty (salt. ana) denotes the authority to govern and to direct. The Lord of Dominicality (rabb) sustains and nurtures that over which He has sovereignty in order to perfect it and, by so doing, display His attributes of perfection. Nursi claims that it is inconceivable that the Creator would nurture and sustain the creation – and humankind in particular – without establishing some kind of requital for those who respond to His nurturing and sustaining, be it with reward or punishment. Like the first ‘aspect’ in the allegory, this first ‘truth’ is a nod towards the ‘argument from ultimate justice’, albeit through the invocation of two particular Divine attributes.

261

The Qur’an Revealed  It is an argument that he continues in his second ‘truth’, but this time by referencing the attributes of generosity (karam) and mercy (rah. ma), together with the corresponding names ‘the Generous’ (karīm) and ‘the Merciful’ (rah. īm). The Lord of this world demonstrates in His works absolute generosity, mercy, splendour and glory. Is it possible, then, that he should not give reward in a manner befitting His generosity and mercy, or punish in a manner befitting His splendour and glory? Indeed, His absolute glory and splendour require the chastisement of the discourteous, while His absolute generosity and mercy require a bestowal of favour worthy of those attributes. Now in this transitory world and brief life, only a millionth part of all this – a mere drop from the ocean - establishes and manifests itself. There must therefore be a blessed realm that is appropriate to that generosity and worthy of that mercy. One would otherwise have to deny the existence of the mercy that is visible to us, and that would be like denying the existence of the sun that fills every day with its light. For irrevocable death would transform compassion into disaster, love into affliction, blessing into vengeance, intellect into a tool of misery, and pleasure into pain, so that the very essence of God’s mercy would vanish.30

That generosity and mercy are manifest in this world is evident, Nursi assures us, from the countless bounties which have been bestowed on created entities, and particularly on man himself. Nevertheless, the degree to which these attributes are reflected in this finite realm is limited. Nursi’s assertion that only a ‘millionth part’ of mercy and generosity can be found in the world is another way of saying that these attributes are made known by their polar opposites. In other words, mercy and generosity are rendered visible and understandable in some situations only by other situations in which mercy and generosity are absent. If mercy and the absence of mercy are vying for supremacy, as Nursi appears to intimate, which of the two is foundational? Nursi, of course, would argue that mercy is foundational and the absence of mercy is simply that – a lack and a privation that has an external reality but no external existence. From the Nursian perspective there can be no true duality; there can be no face-off between a real attribute known as mercy and a real attribute known as ‘lack of mercy’, ‘cruelty’, ‘tyranny’ or whatever name one wishes to give it. Divine attributes are manifested here not in their absoluteness but in degrees. What is foundational is mercy, not its absence, and because mercy is reflected here only to a limited degree, Nursi’s argument is that there must be a realm where mercy is displayed without lack or deficiency. Were one to argue otherwise, and contend that the absence of mercy were foundational, this would mean that what is perceived as mercy is not mercy at all. The theologian and novelist C. S. Lewis argues along the same lines with regard to justice. Lewis writes that his original argument against God had been that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But, he asks, how does one arrive at the notion of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of lines that are straight. Furthermore, he says, to what was he comparing the universe when he deemed it unjust? And if everything was cruel and meaningless, why did he, who was part of the universe, exhibit such a violent reaction against it? But what if he had given up his idea of justice by saying that it was nothing more than emotivism – a private idea or preference of his own? Lewis’s answer is that if he had done

262

  The Hereafter this, his argument against God would have also collapsed, for that argument depended on claiming that the world was really unjust, and not simply that it did not happen to appeal to his personal whims or preferences. And so, he concludes, in the very act of trying to prove the non-existence of God and the concomitant senselessness of reality, he was actually compelled to assume that at least one part of reality – his sense of justice – was in fact full of sense.31 For if the universe were truly without meaning, how would one ever know? For something to be deemed meaningless, the notion of meaningfulness has to exist. Similarly, if there were no mercy in the real sense of the word, there would be no notion of its opposite. Thus, Nursi asserts, mercy is real. And if mercy is real but of limited manifestation in this realm, there must be another realm where absolute mercy is displayed: mercy that is mercy for this temporary realm alone, and which disappears upon death, cannot be mercy at all. Given this, Nursi argues, that an endlessly merciful abode in a realm other than this should not exist is simply inconceivable. The same argument is also used to support the notion of an abode where those who reject mercy are punished. Is it at all possible, then, that He should not prepare a realm of reward and eternal bliss for those believers who respond to the Merciful and Compassionate One’s making Himself known by recognizing Him in faith; to His making Himself beloved by loving Him in worship; and to His mercy by offering thanks and veneration? There must in addition be a realm of punishment appropriate to God’s glory and dignity. For generally the oppressor leaves this world while still in possession of his might, and the oppressed while still subjected to humiliation. But these matters are not neglected; they are deferred for the attention of a supreme tribunal. It sometimes happens too that punishment is enacted in this world. The torments suffered by disobedient and rebellious peoples in previous centuries show that man is not left to his own devices, and that he is always subject to the blows that God’s splendour and majesty may choose to inflict on him. Man has the most important duty in all of creation, endowed as he is with the most important capacities. The Sustainer of all beings makes Himself known to man with all of His well-ordered works and makes Himself beloved of man through the numerous fruits of His love and mercy. If, then, man should fail to recognise Him in return by way of worship, is it conceivable that man should be left to his own devices and go unpunished, or that God should not prepare for him a realm of requital? 32

The third ‘truth’ is seen through from the perspective of Divine wisdom (h. ikma) and justice (‘adāla), and the manifestation of the names ‘the Wise’ (h. akīm) and ‘the Just’ (‘ādil). Do you wish for a proof that all things are done with justice and balance? The fact that all things are endowed with being, given shape and put in their appropriate place in accordance with precise equilibrium and in appropriate measure, shows that all matters are done in accordance with infinite justice and balance. Similarly, the fact that all things are given their rights in accordance with their disposition, that they receive all the necessities of their being and all the requirements of life in the most fitting form - this too is the sign left by a hand of infinite justice. It is clear that the Being Who controls this world does so in accordance with absolute wisdom. If you require proof, look at the principle of preservation of benefit in

263

The Qur’an Revealed  all things. Do you not see that numerous wise benefits are intended in all the limbs, bones and veins of man, in the cells of his brain and in every particle of his body? All of this shows that matters are accomplished in accordance with infinite wisdom. The existence of the utmost regularity in the creation of all things is a proof of the same truth.33

Here, Nursi draws on support from the manifestation of two closely related attributes – justice (‘adāla) and wisdom (h. ikma) – in creation itself to conclude that all entities in the cosmos are given what they require in the most appropriate form and in precisely the exact proportion. Etymologically, ‘adāla covers a wide range of meanings, including acting and dealing justly, equitably and with fairness and proportion; establishing justice; straightening and disposing aright; holding as equal; and adjusting properly as to relative magnitude.34 That ‘adāla is mentioned here together with h. ikma reflects the Nursian assertion that justice – in the sense of balance, equilibrium and the other meanings mentioned above – can be realised only by one with absolute wisdom, that is, one who has perfect knowledge of what is true, right and fit for the purpose in question. Having argued that the cosmos demonstrates both justice and wisdom, Nursi then concludes that One Who is both Just and Wise will never leave His purposes unfulfilled, His faithful servants unrewarded or His recalcitrant subjects unpunished. God demonstrates his dominical sovereignty in the wisdom, order, justice and equilibrium that pervade all things, from the stars to the atoms. Given this, is it possible that He should not bestow favour on those who believe in His wisdom and justice and seek refuge under the protective wing of His dominicality? Is it possible that He should not reward those whose acts are for the purpose of worshipping Him? Similarly, is it possible that He should not chastise those who disbelieve in His wisdom and justice, and who rebel against Him in insolence? Now not even a thousandth part of that wisdom and justice is exercised with respect to man in this transient world; rather, it is deferred. Most of the people of misguidance leave this world unpunished, while most of the people of guidance leave it unrewarded. All things are, therefore, referred to a supreme tribunal in another, future realm. The existence of a high degree of fine artistry in all things proves that there exists also the impress of an infinitely Wise Maker. Further, the inclusion within the minute body of man of an index of all being, of the keys to all the treasuries of mercy, and of the mirrors of all the Divine Names, demonstrates the existence of wisdom within that infinitely fine artistry. Now is it at all possible that the wisdom which thus permeates the workings of dominicality should not wish to favour eternally those who seek refuge beneath the wing of dominicality and who offer obedience in faith? 35

The centrality to the creational schema of man himself is highlighted here by Nursi. Man, he says, is the greatest of creatures, with the greatest of needs – the most salient being his ardent desire for immortality. Given that Divine justice and wisdom fulfil the needs of the most insignificant beings in creation, is it possible, Nursi asks, that they should fail to fulfil the legitimate needs of man? Man’s desire for eternity, Nursi says, is an indication of the fact that he has been created for eternity, and for either the rewards or punishments that pertain to it. Given that neither man’s requirements, nor the requirements of Divine justice and wisdom, can be met in this brief temporal abode, the existence of an everlasting realm

264

  The Hereafter is not only necessary but inevitable. And that realm will, Nursi assures us, include an eternal paradise and an eternal hell, both logical concomitants of wisdom and justice.36 Nursi’s fourth ‘truth’ looks at the issue of the hereafter from the point of view of the Creator’s generosity (jūd) and beauty (jamāl), and through the Divine names ‘the Generous’ (jawād) and ‘the Beautiful’ (jamīl). Adorning the earth with all of these objects of beauty, creating the sun and moon as lamps, filling the surface of the globe with the finest varieties of sustenance, all of which are renewed several times each season – all of this betokens the existence of absolute generosity and liberality. These attributes of perfection in turn require the existence of a realm that is everlasting, where they may be displayed for all eternity. They also require that those who appreciate these attributes should be taken to that abode and allowed to remain there eternally, without suffering the pain of cessation and separation. For just as the cessation of pain is a form of pleasure, so too the cessation of pleasure is a form of pain, which One Who possesses absolute generosity is unwilling to countenance. It requires, then, the existence both of an eternal paradise and of supplicants to abide in it eternally. Absolute generosity and liberality desire to bestow endless bounties and everlasting kindness. The bestowal of these require in turn eternal gratitude. This necessitates the perpetual existence of those who receive such kindness so that they may show their gratitude for that perpetual bestowal and constant bounty. A trivial pleasure, lasting for only a brief time and made bitter by cessation, is not compatible with the requirements of generosity and liberality.37

What applied to the attributes of mercy, justice and wisdom in the previous truths applies, mutatis mutandis, to the attributes of beauty (jamāl) and generosity (jūd) in Nursi’s fourth ‘truth’. As Nursi tells us on countless occasions, the cosmos is a showcase for the signs of the beauty of its Maker – that ‘Hidden Treasure’, who has created creation in order to be known, loved and worshipped. Beauty, as he has also shown, cannot remain hidden, and is displayed for all to see – and given to others freely in the form of countless bounties – through an act of absolute generosity. However, absolute beauty and generosity cannot be experienced in a limited world, and so there must of necessity be a boundless, eternal realm in which these attributes of perfection can be given full reign. However, that realm exists not only as an everlasting gallery of Divine bounties, but as a permanent abode in which those bounties may be witnessed eternally by those who appreciate them. It would make no sense from the point of view of Divine beauty and generosity, Nursi suggests, if that absolute beauty were to go unrecognised. Moreover, for man to be deprived of an eternity in which to appreciate that everlasting beauty and generosity would serve to render the very notions of beauty and generosity meaningless. In short, beauty and fairness desire to see and be seen. Both of these require the existence of yearning witnesses and bewildered admirers. And since beauty and fairness are eternal and everlasting, their witnesses and admirers must have perpetual life. An eternal beauty can never be satisfied with transient admirers. An admirer condemned to irreversible separation will find his love turning to enmity once he conceives of separation. His

265

The Qur’an Revealed  admiration will yield to ridicule, his respect to contempt. For just as obstinate man is an enemy to what is unknown to him, so too he is opposed to all that lies beyond his reach, and love that is not infinite will respond to a beauty that deserves unending admiration with implicit enmity, hatred and rejection. From this we understand the profound reason for the unbeliever’s enmity to God. So endless generosity and liberality, peerless fairness and beauty, flawless perfection - all these require the existence of eternally grateful and longing supplicants and admirers. But we see in this caravanserai of the world that everyone quickly leaves and vanishes, having had only a taste of that generosity, enough to whet his appetite but not to satiate him, and having seen only a dim light coming from the perfection, or rather a faint shadow of its light, without in any way being fully satisfied. It follows, then, that men are going toward a place of eternal joy where all will be bestowed on them in full measure. In short, just as this world, with all its creatures, decisively demonstrates the existence of the Glorious Maker, so too do His sacred attributes and Names indicate, show and logically require the existence of the hereafter.38

The fifth ‘truth’ considers the existence of the hereafter through the prism of Divine compassion (shafaqa) and what Nursi calls ‘Muhammadan worship’ (‘ubūdiyyat-i Muh. ammadiyya), together with the Divine names ‘Answerer of prayer’ (mujīb) and ‘the Compassionate’ (rah. īm). Nursi’s main line of argument rests on the assumption that a compassionate God Who fulfils the most apparently insignificant need of his lowliest creatures in the most unexpected of fashions would never ignore the needs of the one described by Nursi as ‘the foremost of His servants’, the Prophet Muhammad. If God answers the voiced and unvoiced ‘invocations’ of the bee or the earthworm by providing them with the sustenance they have ‘petitioned’ Him for through the tongue of mute eloquence, is it reasonable to think that He would ignore the impassioned pleas of the Prophet and pay no attention to his invocations? The kindness and ease manifested in the feeding and nurturing of weak and young animals show that the Monarch of the cosmos exercises his dominicality with absolute mercy. Would One Who is merciful to this degree reject the prayer of the most virtuous and beloved being in all creation? Recall the allegory in which we described a meeting at which a most noble commander delivered an important discourse. In order to uncover the truth indicated in the comparison, let us depart from this age and travel with our imaginations to the Arabian Peninsula at the time of the Prophet, in order to visit and watch him while he is performing his duties and engaging in worship. Look carefully. You will see that he is praying for eternal bliss with a supplication so sublime that it is as though the whole world were supplicating with him. For the worship he performs contains within itself not only the worship of the community that follows him, but also that of all the other prophets, by virtue of the correspondence existing between him and them. Moreover, he offers his supplications in such a vast congregation that it is as if all luminous and perfect men, from the time of Adam down to the present, were saying “Amen!” to his prayers! For he is praying for a need that is so universal – the need for immortality - that not only the people of this earth but also the inhabitants of

266

  The Hereafter the heavens and the whole of creation are proclaiming along with him, “Yes, O Lord! Grant his prayer; we too desire what he desires.” 39

The greatest of all human desires is, Nursi contends, the desire for immortality. And it is precisely that desire which the Prophet expresses in his supplications. The mission of the Prophet, the revelation of the Quran, the advent of Islam – the key purpose of all of these was to awaken man to the existence not only of an eternally subsisting Creator but also of his own potential eternality. Through his supplications, Muhammad embodies the hopes of the whole of humanity and, as Nursi says, releases all created beings from captivity in what the unregenerate soul believes to be a state of utter annihilation and futility, elevating them instead to the zenith of exaltedness and, eventually, to eternity itself.40 Given that God takes pity on even the lowliest of creatures, Nursi argues, it is inconceivable that He would not take pity on the most esteemed being in creation. The Prophet requests bliss and eternity from One Who is All-Hearing and All-Seeing, Generous and Powerful, Merciful and Omniscient – One Who sees, hears, accepts and takes pity upon the most secret desires of his lowliest creatures, even if their pleas are proffered in silence. God responds to appeals in a fashion so wise, percipient and merciful that no doubt remains that all that nurturing and regulating can derive only from One Who possesses all of these attributes of perfection. Would He then reject the appeal of the Prophet, the pride of all being, who is offering a supplication which in its reality contains the essence of the worship of all of mankind? For he is asking for eternal bliss for himself and for his community; he is asking for eternity and paradise. He is making his plea together with all the Divine Sacred Names that display their beauty in the mirrors of all created being. You can see, indeed, that he is seeking intercession from those Names.41

Much has been written, and sadly misunderstood, about the alleged ability of Muhammad to ‘intercede’ on behalf of his fellow believers at the ‘supreme tribunal’ which precedes the judgement of men. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to unpack the various arguments proffered for and against Prophetic intercession in the popularly accepted sense of the word, although there a number of sources to which interested readers may refer if they wish to acquaint themselves with a variety of approaches to the issue.42 However, a short excursus into the Nursian notion of intercession is necessary here in order to contextualise his passages on ‘Muhammadan worship’ in the context of his ‘proofs’ of the reality of the hereafter. While Nursi accepts the principle of Prophetic intercession, he articulates it for the most part in the terms of reference dictated by his ‘theology of Divine names’. Here, for example, the Prophet’s seeking of intercession from the Divine names may be understood in the context of his role as locus of manifestation (maz.  har) and displayer (muz.  hir) par excellence of all of the Divine names, to the very highest level possible. For Nursi, Muhammad represents the most comprehensive mirror held up to the ‘beautiful names of God’ in creation. His ‘seeking intercession from those Names’, as Nursi puts it, may thus be understood as his making known those Names to others – be it through revelation or through his own personal behaviours as prophet and exemplar – and, by making them known, presenting them as means to human salvation. To make them truly known is to teach people that attributes of perfection, samples of which can be found in all of the entities which make up creation, belong not to creation itself but to its Creator, and that if salvation and the

267

The Qur’an Revealed  promise of eternal bliss in an everlasting realm is to be attained, then it is imperative that those names be attributed to their rightful Owner. Attribution in this sense is more than just acknowledgment: it also involves a conscious ‘handing back’ of that which one imagines to be one’s own to its true and proper Source. As we have seen in Chapter Five, this means a process of surrender (taslīmiyya) to the will of God which is effected through the gradual ‘purification’ of the soul as man achieves self-knowledge and God-awareness. And to achieve self-knowledge and God-awareness is to understand that in and of himself, man is nothing and God is everything; to achieve ‘purification’ of the soul is to realise that the samples of the attributes of perfection that one finds within oneself are really just that: samples, or pale reflections of originals which exist in absolute form elsewhere. To seek intercession from the names, then, is to put one’s trust not in the human self, which, while desirous of immortality on account of the taste it receives from the reflection of those attributes of perfection, is existentially impotent and therefore can attain what it desires only if it truly understands the Source of its desire. The Prophet’s supplication to God in this passage both symbolises the desire of all men from Adam onwards to attain eternity and indicates the correct way in which attempts to satisfy that desire should be made. The centrality of Muhammad to the Divine purpose in this regard is highlighted by Nursi in startling terms: If there were not countless reasons and causes for the existence of the hereafter, a single supplication offered by that exalted being would be enough for the creation of paradise, which is as easy for God as the creation of spring.43 So just as the Prophet is the means for the attainment of eternal bliss through his messengerhood and guidance, he is the cause for the existence of that bliss and the means for the creation of paradise by means of his worship and supplication.44

Not only is the supplication of Muhammad posited as one of the most compelling reasons for the existence of the hereafter, his prophethood is considered by Nursi to be one of the most compelling reasons for the existence of the ‘here-and-now’: In just the same way that the messengerhood of the Prophet was the reason for the foundation of this realm of trial - the saying “Were it not for thee, were it not for thee, I would not have created the spheres” being an indication of this45 - so too the worship he performed was the cause for the foundation of the abode of bliss. So just as the Prophet opened the gates of this world with his messengerhood, he opens the gates of the hereafter with his worship.46

The Tradition quoted by Nursi, which has God telling Muhammad that “If it weren’t for you, I would not have created the spheres” would seem to confirm for him the fundamentality of the Prophet and the Prophetic mission to the very existence not only of the temporal realm but also of the everlasting worlds beyond. Given the centrality of the Prophet to the cosmic scheme as posited by Nursi, then, it would appear to be in complete contradiction to the purpose of creation if the Prophet’s supplication for immortality were to go unanswered. The sixth ‘truth’ concerns Divine splendour (h. ishma) and eternality (sarmadiyya), and the manifestation of the Divine names ‘the Glorious’ (jalīl) and ‘the Everlasting’ (bāqī). As with the other ‘truths’, Nursi’s objective here is to offer theological evidence of the existence not only of a hereafter, but of a hereafter that is witnessed by everlasting ‘mirrors’, namely

268

  The Hereafter the created beings who witness His signs in this fleeting earthly realm. However, the line of reasoning differs slightly here in that the evidences he brings are adduced as much to support his argument for a hereafter which exists for the sake of the Divine Names as they are to support his contention that mankind will have everlasting life. In other words, the hereafter is, in a sense, as much a ‘requirement’ for God Himself as it is for man. The splendour of dominicality commands and subdues all beings, from vast stars to minute particles. Given this, is it at all possible that it would concentrate all of its attention on the wretched transient beings that pass a brief life in the caravanserai of this world and not create an eternal realm where the unending manifestation of his most splendid dominicality may be displayed? From the alternation of the seasons, the motions of the celestial objects in the heavens and from the subjugation of the earth to man, it is clear that behind the veil a sublime dominicality exists, and that a monarch of great splendour is at work. Now such a dominical kingdom requires subjects worthy of itself, as well as an appropriate mode of manifestation. But when you look at the caravanserai of the world, you will see that its most noble subjects, endowed with the most comprehensive of functions, are gathered together for a brief time only, and in the most wretched of states. The caravanserai fills and empties daily, its visitors staying only temporarily in this abode of trial in order that they be tested. The abode itself changes from hour to hour, the subjects of the monarch staying no more than a few brief minutes in order to behold samples of the Glorious Maker’s bounties and to look on His miraculous works of art in the gallery of the world with a buyer’s eye. Then they disappear. The exhibition in the gallery also changes by the minute, but whoever leaves it can never return, and whoever enters it will ultimately depart.47

The continual filling and emptying of the ‘caravanserai’, together with the endless transformations that take place within it, betoken for Nursi a permanent source of all of the bounties and beauties which exist only as fleeting reflections and pale shadows in this temporary realm. That which is sampled by each caravan of beings during its brief sojourn in the caravanserai is changing by the moment, and thus can be only a sample of something much greater which lies beyond. Thus there must, Nursi argues, be permanent palaces and eternal abodes in which God’s absolute and everlasting sovereignty are displayed, and where the original forms of the shadow, reflections and copies displayed in the caravanserai can be found. Those permanent palaces are in part a reward for those who have appreciated the bounties during their brief lives on earth: If we strive here in this world, it is for the sake of what awaits us there. We work here and are rewarded there. Bliss awaits everyone there in accordance with his capacity, so long as he does not squander his share. Consequently it is impossible that such eternal kingship should concentrate exclusively on these wretched transient beings.48

This final sentence is telling. By its very definition, eternal kingship cannot be contained within the confines of a limited realm such as this, and cannot, as Nursi puts it, ‘concentrate exclusively on these wretched transient beings’. The existence of eternal ‘palaces of abode’, then, must be as much for the sake of eternal kingship as it is for the reward of the transient beings who acknowledge and appreciate it during their stay in the caravanserai of the world.

269

The Qur’an Revealed  Now consider this. Millions are spent on the decoration of this caravanserai so that guests should enjoy their one night’s stay there, and for their instruction. But the guests see very little of those decorations, look at them for a very short time; briefly tasting the joys of what is offered them, they go on their way without being satiated. But each guest takes a photograph of the objects in the caravanserai by means of his special camera. Also, the servants of that great personage record with great care the conduct of all the guests and preserve the record. You see, too, that he destroys every day most of the valuable decorations and replaces them with fresh decorations for the newly arriving guests. After seeing all this, will any doubt remain that the personage who has constructed this caravanserai on the road has permanent and exalted dwellings, inexhaustible and precious treasures, an uninterrupted flow of great generosity? By means of the generosity displayed in the caravanserai, he intends merely to whet the appetite of his guests for those things he keeps in his immediate presence; to awaken their desire for the gifts he has prepared for them.49

An earlier contention was that God ‘requires’ the existence of the hereafter as much as man does. However, this passage helps us to understand that this ‘requirement’ is not a need, as it is in the case of man. To say that God ‘requires’ the hereafter is really to say that the hereafter is a logical concomitant of His being God. In fact, for God there is no hereafter, at least not in the way there is for created beings: all that He is, according to Muslim theology, He is timelessly, which means that for Him there is no past, present or future. Indeed, as Nursi says in the above passage, the existence of the caravanserai – i.e. the present, temporal world – is merely a means whereby He whets the appetite of His guests for those things which he keeps in his immediate presence. The ‘hereafter’, then, is hereafter for temporal beings alone; for God, there is neither before nor after. The realm which man will enter after his death is present with God now, and has always been present with him. Indeed, all realms are in God’s immediate presence, for pre-eternal and post-eternal sovereignty ‘require’ boundless, absolute realms in which it may display itself. One may venture the proposition, then, that the ‘hereafter’, as a logical concomitant of God’s absolute sovereignty, is arguably more about God than it is about that which is ‘other-than-God’. Nursi concludes the ‘truth’ by saying that if one looks upon the state of the caravanserai of this world, a number of principles will be revealed. The first is that the world, like a caravanserai, does not exist for its own sake: it is constructed in order to receive and host a never-ending stream of guests, who arrive and depart continuously. In short, it looks to objectives beyond that of existing for its own sake alone. The second principle, Nursi says, is that those who stay in the caravanserai are guests, and are there by invitation. Their stay is a temporary one, and if they think otherwise, they will have nothing but regret upon leaving. The adornments of the caravanserai that is the world are not there simply for man’s enjoyment, for his stay is not long enough for him to enjoy all that is there to the full. And the more he forms an attachment to the caravanserai, the more painful it will be when he is removed – forcefully – from its confines. Clearly, then, Nursi argues, the beauties and bounties of the world must, as far as man is concerned, be there as much for test and instruction as for mere enjoyment. The fleeting existence of these beauties and bounties must betoken a source in which the perpetual originals of these adornments can be found. The sojourn of man in the caravanserai must, then, be for the sake

270

  The Hereafter of seeking that source. In other words, the bounties and beauties are not ‘self-referential’ but ‘other-indicative’: they point to meanings over and above their own selves. Another principle, Nursi says, is that the ephemeral objects in the world have not been created merely to be annihilated, even though that is how it may appear. All of these transient objects have not been created for the sake of annihilation, in order to appear briefly and then vanish. The purpose for their creation is rather briefly to be assembled in existence and acquire the desired form, so that these may be noted, their images preserved, their meanings known and their results recorded. This is so that, for example, everlasting spectacles might be wrought for the people of eternity, and that they might serve other purposes in the realm of eternity. You will understand that things have been created for eternity, not for annihilation; and as for apparent annihilation, it has the sense of a completion of duty and a release from service, for every transient thing advances to annihilation with one aspect, but remains eternally with numerous other aspects. Look, for example, at the flower, a word of God’s power; for a short time it smiles and looks at us, and then hides behind the veil of annihilation. It departs just like a word leaving your mouth. But it does so entrusting thousands of its fellows to men’s ears. It leaves behind meanings in men’s minds as numerous as those minds. The flower, too, expressing its meaning and thus fulfilling its function, goes and departs. But it goes leaving its apparent form in the memory of everything that sees it, its inner essence in every seed. It is as if each memory and seed were a camera to record the adornment of the flower, or a means for its perpetuation. If such be the case with an object at the simplest level of life, it can be readily understood how closely tied to eternity is man, the highest form of life and the possessor of an eternal soul. Again, from the fact that the laws - each resembling a spirit according to which large flowering and fruit-bearing plants are formed and the representations of their forms are preserved and perpetuated in most regular fashion in tiny seeds throughout tempestuous changes - from this fact it can be easily understood how closely tied and related to eternity is the spirit of man, which possesses an extremely exalted and comprehensive nature, and which although clothed in a body, is a conscious and luminous law issuing from the divine command.50

The beings which arrive in the temporal world and then depart are created, then, to impart meaning: they have a purpose which transcends mere existence for its own sake. However, while man may be the ‘fruit of creation’, and while the hereafter may be a requirement of his creational make-up, man should not think that the purposes of Divine creativity are restricted to this world and to the understanding of human beings. Nursi says that all which exists does not exist solely for the sake of man, and that to imagine otherwise is to make the same mistake as the ‘people of misguidance’, whose utilitarian approach to the world rejects as futile anything which they cannot either understand or take personal benefit from. The purposes for the existence of beings, Nursi says, relate to three categories: The first and the most exalted pertains to the Creator. It consists of presenting to the gaze of the Pre-Eternal Witness the bejewelled and miraculous wonders He has affixed to the object in question, as if in a military parade. To live for a fleeting second is enough to attain that glance. Indeed, the potentiality and intent for existence is enough, without ever

271

The Qur’an Revealed  emerging into life. This purpose is fully realized, for example, by delicate creatures that vanish swiftly and by seeds and kernels, each a work of art, that never come to life, that is, never bear fruit or flower. They all remain untouched by vanity and purposelessness. Thus the first purpose of all things is to proclaim, by means of their life and existence, the miracles of power and the traces of artistry of the Maker and display them to the gaze of the Glorious Monarch.51

The primary purpose of existence, then, is to fulfil God’s own desire to witness His own attributes of perfection. Unlike that which is ‘other-than-God’, Divine existence is of necessity ‘self-referential’: it cannot be ‘other-indicative’ because in fact there is no ‘other’ to indicate. The existence of ‘other-than-God’ – the ‘mirrors’ that are created beings – is there solely for God to observe His own perfections. There must be as many mirrors in existence as there are aspects of the Divine capable of being witnessed, and thus Divine artistry unfolds in an infinite number of ways and through an infinite number of realms, many of which are both physically and rationally inaccessible to man. In outlining this primary purpose of existence, Nursi provides an answer to those who question the relevance to man of objects of creation that he may never be able to witness personally, such as celestial phenomena which are thousands of light years away, or to those who criticise what they believe to be examples of creational superfluity, such as the production of millions of spores from a single mushroom, most of which will fail to germinate, or the release of around three million sperms into the womb to vie for the attention of a single egg. The fact that such acts appear wasteful and futile is, according to Nursi’s argument, because their primary purpose is not taken into account. If man – and unregenerate man in particular – can see no purpose in certain phenomena, this does not mean that purpose is lacking. The second purpose of all existence and the result of all being pertains to conscious creation. Everything is like a truth-displaying missive, an artistic poem or a wise word of the Glorious Maker, offered to the gaze of angels and jinn, of men and animals, and desiring to be read by them. It is an object for the contemplation and instruction of every conscious being that looks upon it.52

The second purpose does not need much elaboration, for it is a constant theme in Nursi’s cosmological discourse: all things which exist point to meanings beyond themselves and are there to be read as signs and indications of the One Who has created them. The third purpose of existence, Nursi says, pertains to the soul of the thing itself, and consists of what he calls ‘minor consequences such as the experience of pleasure and joy, and living with some degree of permanence and comfort’. There is, then, an aspect of all created beings which is in a sense ‘self-referential’, although clearly to ‘read’ an entity as being solely thus would be to misread it completely. He explains this by way of a brief allegory: If we consider the purpose of a servant employed as a steersman on some royal ship, we see that only one hundredth of that purpose relates to the steersman himself - i.e., the wage he receives; ninety-nine hundredths of the purpose relate to the king who owns the ship.53

A similar relation exists, says Nursi, between the purpose of thing insofar as it is related to its own self and the purpose insofar as it is related to its Maker.

272

  The Hereafter In the light of this multiplicity of purposes we can now explain the ultimate compatibility between divine wisdom and economy on the one hand, and divine liberality and generosity - in fact, infinite generosity - on the other hand, even though they appear to be opposites and contradictory. In the individual purposes of things, liberality and generosity predominate, and the name of Most Generous is manifested. From the point of view of individual purpose, fruits and grains are indeed beyond computation, and they demonstrate infinite generosity. But in universal purposes, wisdom predominates, and the name of All-Wise is manifested. However many purposes a tree has, each of its fruits contains that many purposes, and these can be divided into the three categories we have established. Their universal purposes demonstrate an infinite wisdom and economy. Infinite wisdom and infinite generosity and liberality are thus combined, despite their apparent opposition. For example, one of the purposes for raising an army is the maintenance of order. Whatever troops are available for the purpose will suffice or be more than enough. But the whole army will be barely enough for other purposes such as protecting the national frontiers and repelling enemies; its size will be in perfect balance with utter wisdom. Thus the wisdom of the state will be joined to its splendour, and it can be said that there is no excess in the army.54

Nursi’s exposition of these different purposes is designed primarily to disabuse man of the notion that the creation and annihilation of countless beings, merely as a means of alerting man to the reality of the hereafter, admits of no wastefulness or excess, for there are reasons for the creation of beings which do not pertain to man alone. In his seventh ‘truth’, Nursi conceptualises the hereafter with the help of the attributes of Divine protection (h. ifz.  ) and preservation (h. af īz.  iyya), and through the manifestation of the Divine names of ‘Preserver’ (h. af īz.  ) and ‘Guardian’ (raqīb). He begins by juxtaposing ‘preservation’ with ‘balance’, and concluding that since God creates everything with the purpose of preserving its equilibrium, it is unthinkable that he would not extend his attribute of preservation to the deeds of men. Through his attribute of ‘Preserver’, God protects all things with the utmost balance and order and keeps an account of every being in creation. Is it possible, then, that One Who preserves things in this way should permit the deeds of man, who is Divine vicegerent and bearer of the ‘Trust’, not to be recorded and weighed in the scales of justice? Is it possible that He would allow man’s deeds to go unrewarded or unpunished? Such a thing is inconceivable.55

That preservation and safeguarding are concomitants of God’s dominical activity is reflected, Nursi argues, in the workings of the cosmos itself, and particularly in animate beings, each of which includes in its creational make-up records of its own past and future: Do you not see that all the flowers and fruits of the vast spring, the records of their deeds in appropriate form, the laws of their formation, and the images of their forms are all inscribed into the finite space of a minute seed and are there preserved? The following spring, their record of deeds is set forth in a form of accounting appropriate to them, and another vast world of spring is brought forth with the utmost order and wisdom. This demonstrates the powerful comprehensiveness with which God’s attribute of Preserver exercises itself. Given that the results of such transient and insignificant things are

273

The Qur’an Revealed  preserved, is it at all possible that men’s deeds, which yield important fruits in the world of the unseen, the world of the hereafter and the world of spirits should not be guarded and preserved, should not be recorded as a matter of importance? It is inconceivable.56

What Nursi is asking is this: if each seed contains the information needed for every stage of the development of the flower or tree into which, scroll-like, it will eventually unfurl, does this not demonstrate that there are attributes of preservation and accounting at work in the dynamics of its development? A seed contains the record of what it will become in the future, and what it becomes in the future also contains within it a record of future seeds that will be produced as a result. Such acts of preservation and account keeping surely indicate, Nursi argues, that the deeds of men will be similarly preserved by God, and that the result of those deeds will be revealed to man at some point in the future. Yes, the Being that administers this cosmos preserves all things in order and balance. Order and balance are manifestations of knowledge and wisdom, of will and power. For we see that the substance of every created object is fashioned in a well-ordered and symmetrical fashion. Not only is each of the forms it adopts throughout its life well-ordered, but the totality of these forms is also marked by the same orderliness. We see, too, that the Glorious Preserver preserves many forms of all things in the memory of man, long after those things have performed their function and departed from the manifest world. Man’s memory thus resembles a kind of ‘preserved tablet’. He also writes and inscribes a brief history of a tree, for example, in a seed, which is like the result and outcome of the whole. The memory of man, the fruit of the tree, the kernel of the fruit, the seed of the flower - all of these demonstrate the universality and comprehensiveness of the law of preservation.57

The existence in man of the faculty of memory provides further evidence for Nursi that the attribute of preservation, which pervades all things, constitutes firm evidence of a realm beyond this world where all that has been preserved will be revealed. Moreover, this preservation will be precise: in the words of the Quran, neither an atom’s weight of good nor an atom’s weight of evil will go unrecorded or unrequited. God pays great attention to the function of sovereignty and lavishes extreme care on the dominicality of kingship. Thus He records, or causes to be recorded, the pettiest of happenings, the smallest of services, and preserves in numerous things the form of everything that happens in His realm. This attribute of Preserver indicates that an important register of deeds will be subjected to a precise examination and weighing: the records of men’s deeds will stand revealed. Man has been ennobled by God with Divine vicegerency and the ‘Trust’, so that as a witness to the universality of God’s dominicality he should proclaim Divine unity in the realm of multiplicity. Is it at all possible that he should be tasked with this and go to his grave to sleep peacefully without ever being awakened to give an account of his deeds? Is it possible that he will be allowed to slumber forever without being taken to the plain of resurrection and tried at the Supreme Tribunal? Such a thing is surely inconceivable.58

The eighth ‘truth’ looks at the notion of Divine promise (wa‘d) and threat (wa‘īd), and the manifestation of the Divine names ‘the Beautiful’ (jamīl) and ‘the Glorious’ (jalīl).

274

  The Hereafter The promise of reward and the threat of punishment have been proclaimed unanimously by all the prophets and saints. Is it at all likely, then, that the One Who gave this promise and made this threat should prove unfaithful to His word and thus display both weakness and ignorance? For that which is implied by His promise and threat is not at all difficult for His power to fulfil; indeed, it is simple. It is as easy for Him as bringing back next spring the countless beings of last spring. Furthermore, it is our need, the need of all beings, His own need and the requirement of His dominical sovereignty that He should fulfil His promise. For Him to break His promise would be contrary to the dignity of His power and the comprehensiveness of His knowledge. For the breaking of a promise can arise only from ignorance or impotence.59

Having established in previous ‘truths’ the compassion, mercy, justice, wisdom, generosity and beauty of the Creator, Nursi’s assertion in the eight ‘truth’ is that the breaking of a promise or the failure to carry out a threat signify both mendacity and weakness, neither of which can predicated of a God who is in possession of attributes of perfection such as those mentioned. Indeed, Nursi has no qualms at all about asserting the fact that fidelity to promise is actually required of God by virtue of His own glory (jalāl) and dominical sovereignty (salt. anat-i rubūbiyya). In other words, while God is not compelled by anything ‘other-than-God’ to keep His promise, He is in a sense compelled by the totality of His own attributes of perfection to act in a manner that is in keeping with His divinity.60 Do those of you who deny the promise and the threat know how foolish a crime you are committing with your rejection and unbelief? Paying heed to your own duplicitous whims, your delirious intellect, your deceptive soul, you reject as a liar One Who in no way could ever break His promise and Whose truthfulness and veracity are attested by all visible matters and objects! Despite your infinite pettiness, you are committing a crime of infinitely great proportions. Without doubt you deserve great and eternal punishment. You are like a traveller who closes his eyes to the sunlight and looks instead at the fantasy in his own mind. His imagination wishes to illumine the awesome path in front of him with the light proceeding from the lamp of his mind, which in reality is no stronger than a glow-worm. Whatever has been promised by God Almighty, Whose veracious words are these beings we see and Whose truthful, eloquent signs are the workings of the cosmos, He will of a surety fulfil. He will establish a Supreme Tribunal and give people that which their actions have earned, be it bliss or punishment.61

To countenance the notion that God would break a promise and fail to carry out a threat is to doubt Divine dignity and truth, which amounts to unbelief and is deserving of eternal punishment. On numerous occasions throughout the Risale, Nursi condemns unbelief as a crime not against God but against the totality of beings in creation, whose purpose it is to reflect the Divine attributes and manifest the purpose of Divine creativity, which is the eternal display of those attributes in a permanent realm beyond the confines of this transient world. To deny God does not harm God, Nursi avers; rather, it harms the denier himself and it declares the existence of all other beings to be self-referential and thus ultimately meaningless. In short, the denier deems the whole of creation to be futile, and in so doing condemns his own soul to perdition.62

275

The Qur’an Revealed  The bestowal of life and death (ih. yā wa imāta) comprises Nursi’s ninth ‘truth’, together with the Divine names ‘Eternally Living’ (h. ayy), ‘Self-Subsistent’ (qayyūm), ‘Giver of life’ (muh. yī) and ‘Giver of death’ (mumīt). In this truth, Nursi turns once more to the evidences of resurrection he believes are present in creation, particularly in the phenomenon of spring. Every spring, God gives life to this vast dead and dry earth, demonstrating His power by deploying hundreds of thousands of different forms of creation, each of them no less remarkable than man. In this deployment He demonstrates His all-embracing knowledge by the numberless distinctions and differentiations He makes in the complex intermingling of all of those forms. He displays the splendor of His dominicality by causing all of the entities in the cosmos to collaborate with one another, to revolve within the circle of His command and will, to aid one another and be submitted to Him. Thus in the gathering that takes place every spring we see that in the course of five or six days, hundreds of thousands of different kinds of animal and plant are first gathered together and then dispersed. The roots of all the trees and plants, as well as some animals, are revived and restored exactly as they were. The other animals are recreated in a form so similar as to be almost identical. The seeds which appear, in their outward form, to be so close to each other nonetheless in the course of six days or six weeks become distinct and differentiated from each other, and then with extreme speed, ease and facility are brought to life in the utmost order and equilibrium. Indeed, the Almighty Disposer of this world’s affairs creates in every century, every year and every day, on the narrow and transient face of the globe, numerous signs, examples and indications of the Supreme Gathering and the Plain of Resurrection.63

Given all of this, Nursi says, it is inconceivable that an omnipotent, omniscient, wise and compassionate Creator would or could not bring about a ‘supreme resurrection’ which would usher in the hereafter. Given that He gathers together hundreds of thousands of life forms each spring on the ‘plain of resurrection’ that is the surface of the earth, why would He be unable to bring back to life and gather together all of those who have sojourned on the earth and departed? Invoking another analogy, Nursi asks his readers to imagine some incredibly gifted copyist who is able to write out in a single hour, on a single sheet of paper, the barely legible, half-obliterated letters of three hundred thousand books, but without any error, omission or defect and in a perfectly legible form. If someone were to claim that this copyist was able to write out again from memory a book that he had transcribed, but the ink of which had faded and become illegible owing to its having fallen in a river, would anyone seriously be able to doubt his ability to do so? If you have understood this, now look further and see how the Pre-Eternal Designer turns over in front of our eyes the white page of winter and opens the green pages of spring and summer. Then He inscribes on the page of the earth’s surface, with the pen of power and destiny, in the most beautiful form, more than three hundred thousand species of creation. Not one encroaches upon another. He writes them all together, but none blocks the path of another. In their formation and shape, each is kept separate from the other without any confusion. There is no error in the writing. That Wise and Preserving

276

  The Hereafter One, Who preserves and inserts the spirit of a great tree in the smallest seed, no bigger than a dot - is it permissible even to ask how He preserves the spirits of those who die? 64

To ‘write’ man once – at his origination – and to ‘rewrite’ him after death in order to bring him back to life is not a problem for God, Nursi argues. Indeed, how could it be, given that He has been producing numerous examples of His power to resurrect since the beginning of time? You can, moreover, behold with your own eyes, the numerous designs made by God as signs, similes and indications of resurrection, designs placed by Him in every age and epoch of the world, in the alternation of day and night, even in the appearance and disappearance of clouds in the sky. If you imagine yourself to have been living a thousand years ago, and then compare with each other the two wings of time that are the past and the future, then you will behold examples of the gathering and indications of resurrection as numerous as the centuries and days. If, then, after witnessing so many similes and indications, you regard corporeal resurrection as improbable and rationally unacceptable, know your behaviour to be pure lunacy. See what the Supreme Decree says concerning the truth we are discussing: Look upon the signs of God’s mercy, and see how He restores life to the earth after its death. Verily He it is Who shall bring to life the dead, and He is powerful over all things.65 66

In his tenth ‘truth’, Nursi approaches the hereafter from the perspective of Divine wisdom (h. ikma), grace (‘ināya), mercy (rah. ma) and justice (‘adl), together with the Divine names of ‘All-Wise’ (h. akīm), ‘Generous’ (karīm), ‘Just’ (‘ādil) and ‘Merciful’ (rah. im). The opening argument for the existence of an everlasting realm hinges on the contention that absolute attributes of perfection need more than the limited abode of this world in order to display themselves. Although this world is an impermanent caravanserai and a transient place of testing, it is also a gallery which displays manifest wisdom, evident grace, overwhelming justice and comprehensive mercy. Is it possible that, with the inevitable annihilation of this temporary realm, those attributes of perfection should disappear along with it and go to nothingness? Is it at all possible that in the realm of the Glorious Possessor of all Dominion, in the worlds of the seen and the unseen, that there should not exist permanent abodes with eternal inhabitants to witness the truths of wisdom, grace, mercy and justice in their eternal, absolute forms, and not just as fleeting shadows? Such a thing is inconceivable.67

Nursi then shifts his focus to man, the locus of manifestation of the Divine names, whose eternal existence is required by virtue of his being the most comprehensive mirror of His creator’s attributes. The All-Wise Creator chooses man from among all of His creation to receive His direct and universal address. He makes man a comprehensive mirror held up to His attributes, permitting Him to weigh, taste and become acquainted with all the contents of His treasure trove of mercy. He makes Himself known to man with all of His names, loving him and making Himself beloved of him. Is it possible that He would do all of this and then fail to despatch man to an eternal realm, there to settle him in everlasting peace and felicity? Such a thing is inconceivable.

277

The Qur’an Revealed  Is it at all reasonable that He should impose on every being, even the seed, a task as heavy as a tree, mount in it instances of His wisdom as numerous as the flowers, and beneficial aspects as numerous as the fruits, but assign to that task, to those instances of His wisdom and those beneficial aspects, a purpose pertaining only to this world, one as small as a seed? Is it reasonable to suppose that the only purpose of existence is the life of this world, which is less valuable than a grain of mustard-seed? Is it possible that He should not make of beings seeds for the world of meaning and a tillage for the realm of the hereafter, for them to yield therein their true and worthy results? Is it possible that He should permit such significant alternations to remain without purpose, to be empty and futile? Is it reasonable to think that He would not turn their faces towards the world of meaning and the hereafter, so that they might there reveal their true purposes and fitting results? No, all of this is inconceivable.68

As a comprehensive mirror held up to all of the Divine names and vicegerent in potentia of God on earth, man is connected creationally to all other beings in the cosmos, and points to countless meanings beyond those which pertain solely to his own brief and fleeting earthly life. In other words, man is symbolic of something far greater than his own self. Since he is the locus of manifestation of the names of God, and is able to reflect them consciously, his existence is by default one which possesses ‘other-indicativeness’ (ma‘nā-i h. arf ī): every aspect of his creational make-up indicates and exhibits the One who brought him into being. Given this, to cut short human existence at the point of earthly death and to deprive man of eternal life would be to tantamount to saying that he possesses only ‘self-referentiality’ (ma‘nā-i ismī), and that his creational make-up points solely to his own self and nothing more. For Nursi, this is inconceivable: For is it at all possible that by thus causing things to controvert their own nature He should present His own veracious Names - All-Wise, Generous, Just, Merciful - as being characterized by their opposites? Is it possible that He should deny the true essences of all those beings which indicate His wisdom and generosity, His justice and mercy, that He should reject the testimony of all creatures, and that He should negate the indications made by all things? Again, is it at all possible that God Who proves and shows Himself to be a possessor of absolute wisdom, by attaching to every animate being, or even to every member like the tongue, indeed to every creature, instances of His wisdom and sources of benefit as numerous as the results and the fruits He has attached to a tree - is it at all possible that He should fail to bestow of Himself the greatest of all instances of His wisdom, the most significant of all sources of benefit, the most necessary of all results, that which makes His wisdom into wisdom, His blessings into blessings, His mercy into mercy, the source and aim of all of His wisdom, bounty, mercy and beneficence - eternity, the meeting with Him in the hereafter and everlasting bliss? 69

To create man as a being whose face is turned ‘towards the world of meaning’, but then to deny that meaning by obliterating him at the end of his earthly life and denying him eternal existence would, Nursi argues, render all Divine acts utterly futile. In this case, God would become like a master builder who constructs a fabulous palace, each stone of which contains thousands of intricate calligraphic inscriptions, and each room of which is home to

278

  The Hereafter thousands of precious items and objects of inestimable value, but then fails to build a roof over it, so that when the rains come, everything in the palace is ruined. Such foolishness cannot be predicated of God, Nursi argues, for from absolute goodness, only absolute goodness can issue forth; One Who is possessed of absolute wisdom cannot effect things which are totally devoid of purpose. If, to suppose the impossible, there were no permanent abodes, lofty mansions, everlasting stations and eternal worlds, with their eternal residents, God’s joyous servants, in the realm of that Eternal Monarch Who disposes all affairs and Who constantly is changing the caravanserai and its inmates, then it would be necessary to reject the true essences of wisdom, justice, beneficence and compassion, those four powerful and universal spiritual elements that are like light, air, water and earth, and to deny their existence, even though they are as apparent as that of the external elements. For it is plain that this impermanent world and its contents cannot be a complete manifestation of their true essences. If there is no other place, somewhere else, where they can be manifested fully, it then becomes necessary, with a lunacy like that of the man who denies the existence of the sun even though he sees its light filling the day, to deny the wisdom that we can see in everything in front of our eyes; to deny the beneficence that we can observe in our own souls and in most other things; to deny the justice the signs of which appear so strongly; and to deny the compassion we see everywhere in operation. It follows in turn that we must regard as a foolish prankster, a treacherous tyrant, the one from whom proceed all the wise processes, the generous deeds and the merciful gifts we perceive in the universe. God forbid that this should be so; it is a totally impossible reversal of the truth. Even the foolish sophists, who denied the existence of everything and even that of their own selves, would not readily contemplate such a proposition.70

Here Nursi is reiterating the point he made in his ‘second truth’ concerning mercy, but broadening it to include wisdom, justice, beneficence and compassion – all of which would lose their meaning completely if their existence were confined to this fleeting world alone. For to create man with the desire for immortality, only to deny him everlasting life when he leaves this world can in no way accord with any of these four attributes: it is indicative neither of wisdom nor of justice, and it is the antithesis of beneficence and compassion. If, then, there is no hereafter, Nursi argues, those attributes will be add up to nothing more than a sham – a sick joke without a punch line, executed by a tyrannical cosmic trickster. To countenance such a possibility, Nursi says, is clearly inconceivable. Since the world exists, and within this world wisdom, beneficence, compassion and justice also exist, with their numerous evidences, of a certainty the hereafter also exists, just as surely as does this world. Since one aspect of everything in this world is turned to that world and is proceeding toward it, to deny that world would be denying this world with all it contains. Just as the allotted hour and the grave await man, so too do Paradise and Hell, anxiously watching for his arrival.71

The eleventh ‘truth’ concerns humanity (insāniyya) itself, together with the Divine name of ‘Truth’ (h. aqq). Here, Nursi focuses explicitly on the status that humankind has as the choicest fruit of Divine creativity.

279

The Qur’an Revealed  Man has been created as the most significant of God’s servants and the most thoughtful recipient of His glorious address. Man is the most comprehensive mirror held up to the manifestation of the Divine names; he is the most beautiful miracle of Divine power, created in the fairest of forms. Man has been taught all of the Divine names in order that he may assess and perceive the contents of God’s treasure troves of mercy. God has made man an investigator of secrets, equipped more than any other creature with instruments to measure and gauge. And yet He has also made man the most needy of creatures with respect to His endless bounties; He has made him the most desirous of immortality and the most fearful of annihilation. He has made him sublime in disposition, in the most elevated of forms and characters, yet He has also made him the most delicate, the poorest and neediest of animals, and the most wretched and subject to pain in this worldly life. Given that God has done all of this with man, is it conceivable that He would not send him to the eternal realm for which he is suited, and for which he longs more than anything else? Is it possible that He should thus negate the whole essence of humanity, act in a manner totally contrary to His own veracity, and perform an act of injustice that the eye of truth must deem ugly? 72

In one sense, man is what Kierkegaard termed a synthesis of beast and angel, but with the potential either to soar higher than the former or to sink lower than the latter.73 The Quran states that We have indeed created man in the best of moulds, then do We abase him (to be) the lowest of the low,- except such as believe and do righteous deeds: For they shall have a reward unfailing.74

Although man is existentially impotent, he is, in potentia, vicegerent of God and therefore capable of manifesting consciously all of the Divine names. Given, then, that he is what Nursi calls a ‘representation in miniature of His cosmic processes’, why would God, Who has preferred man over the angels, bestow all of this on man and yet withhold from him eternity, which is the ‘purpose, result and fruit’ of man’s duties on earth? The Quran asserts that only those who fail to believe and perform deeds of righteousness will be cast down to the ‘lowest of the low’. Is it possible, then, Nursi asks, that God should make no distinction and abase all human souls without exception? This would be inconceivable, he argues, for it would transform the human intellect, which is a tool given by God in order for man to attain happiness, into a grotesque instrument of torture. For God to bestow on man the means whereby he is able to surpass the level of angels and concretise his desires for immortality, only to withhold eternity from him and consign him instead to nothingness would, Nursi argues, be to act in total contradiction to His absolute wisdom and mercy. Man’s creation is such that he has capacities, drives, desires and potentialities that cannot possibly be realised to their full extent in one brief lifetime on earth: The subtleties inscribed in the book of man’s heart, the senses written down in the notebook of his intellect, the equipment contained in his essential character, are all turned towards Eternal Bliss; they have been given to man and fashioned in accordance with this ultimate goal. For example, if one servant and illustrator of the intellect called “the imaginative power,” is told that “you can have a million years of life and rule over the world, but in the end you shall become nothing,” it will react with sorrow instead of pleasure, unless

280

  The Hereafter deceived by vain fancy and the interference of the soul. The greatest of transient things cannot, then, satisfy even the smallest faculty of man. It is, then, this disposition of man - his desires extending to eternity, his thoughts that embrace all of creation and his wishes that embrace the different varieties of eternal bliss-that demonstrates he has been created for eternity and will indeed proceed to eternity. This world is merely a temporary stopping place, a waiting-room for the hereafter.75

Man is such, Nursi argues, that he is created specifically for eternal life. That he should not reach the everlasting realm is, therefore, inconceivable. Nursi’s twelfth and final ‘truth’ views the existence of the hereafter from the perspective of the Prophetic mission (risāla) and revelation (tanzīl), and is basically a form of the ‘argument from authority’: Is it at all possible that errant doubts, no stronger than the wing of a fly, could close the path to the hereafter and the gate to Paradise that have been definitively opened by the Most Noble Messenger (PBWH), with all of his might, relying upon the power of his thousand certified miracles as well as the thousands of decisive verses of the All-Wise Quran, a book miraculous in forty different ways - that Messenger whose words are affirmed by all of the other prophets, relying upon their own miracles, whose claim is affirmed by all of the saints, relying upon their visionary and charismatic experiences, and to whose veracity all of the purified scholars bear witness, relying upon their investigations of truth? 76

Nursi has already expressed in an earlier ‘truth’ the idea that the very existence of Muhammad himself, for whom the whole of the cosmos was created, is enough to guarantee the existence of an eternal realm in the hereafter. Now, in his final ‘truth’, he adduces not only the evidentiary miracles of the Prophet and the teachings of the Quran but also the revelations vouchsafed to countless other prophets before him, together with their various miracles, as support for his argument that the existence of an eternal realm is not to be doubted. Although Nursi discusses only twelve ‘truths’, he assures his readers that the ‘proofs of resurrection’ are not limited only to these. The Quran alone, he says, indicates thousands of other aspects of the issue as well, with each aspect being an indication that this present, transient realm will be transformed eventually into an eternal one. Nor, he says, should the reader imagine that the Divine names which necessitate the existence of resurrection and the hereafter are only those mentioned in his brief treatise, for in reality “all of the Divine names manifest in the ordering of the cosmos logically require the existence of resurrection, and indeed make it imperative.” 77

Conclusion

Nursi’s discourse on life after death, crystallised in his treatise On Resurrection and the Hereafter, uses extended allegory and a number of well-crafted theological arguments in what, I venture, is a sustained attempt to make the non-rational reasonable. The contours of his arguments follow those proffered by the Quran and his methodology is more or less identical. The Quran itself approaches the issue of the hereafter as one which is acceptable

281

The Qur’an Revealed  to human reason but clearly not provable empirically, and Nursi does exactly the same. Ever the realist, Nursi consoles those of his readers for whom his arguments with regard to the hereafter may appear unfathomable at first: Dear readers, do not say, “Why am I unable to understand immediately this subject in all its details?” and do not be saddened by your failure to grasp it completely. For even a master of philosophy such as Ibn Sina said that “Resurrection cannot be understood by rational criteria.” His judgement was that we must believe in resurrection, but reason cannot aid our belief. Similarly, all the scholars of Islam unanimously have held that resurrection rests entirely on traditional proofs; it cannot be rationally examined. Naturally, so profound, and at the same time, so exalted a path cannot suddenly become a public highway for the exercise of the reason. But we would offer a thousand thanks that the Merciful Creator has bestowed upon us this much of the path, by means of the effulgence of the All-Wise Quran and His own mercy, in an age when belief by imitation is past and meek acceptance has disappeared. For the amount vouchsafed to each of us is enough for the salvation of our faith. Being content with the amount that we have been able to understand, we should reread the treatise and seek to increase our comprehension.78

282

Chapter Nine Belief and Unbelief Introduction

The psychodynamics of belief – the whys and wherefores of the process which culminates in one’s choice either to believe in God or to disbelieve – is not something to which Nursi dedicates much time in the Risale-i Nur. Nor, unlike the classical scholars, does he discuss in minute detail the juridico-theological aspects of belief – for example, the number of things that one must believe in to be deemed a believer; whether belief can increase or decrease; under what circumstances is a believer no longer considered a believer, and so on. On the merits of belief and the demerits of unbelief, however, Nursi has a great deal to say, with references to the subject scattered throughout the Risale. One treatise in the The Words collection – On the Virtues of Belief – represents arguably his definitive statement on the issue, and it is on this work in particular that we shall be focusing in this chapter. However, to say that Nursi glosses over what may be termed the more formal aspects of belief mentioned above would be a misrepresentation, and so before embarking on a journey through his discourse on the virtues of belief, we will look first at how he deals with these technicalities.

The ‘pillars of belief ’

There appears to be a consensus among the mainstream Muslim scholars that the principles of belief are six: God; the angels; the prophets; the revealed scriptures; the ‘Last Day’; and the principle of ‘Divine decree and determination’. Nursi condenses these into one single, indivisible truth, each of the six aspects of which confirms the other five: Belief is a single truth, which, composed of its six pillars, cannot be divided up. It is a universal that cannot be separated into parts. It is a whole that cannot be broken up. For each of the pillars of belief proves the other pillars with the proofs that prove itself: they are all extremely powerful proofs of each other. In which case, an invalid idea that cannot shake all the pillars together with all their proofs cannot in reality negate any one of the pillars, or even a single of their truths, and cannot deny them. Under the veil of

283

The Qur’an Revealed  non-acceptance one might only, by shutting one’s eyes, commit ‘obstinate unbelief;’ one would by degrees fall into absolute disbelief and lose one’s humanity, and go to Hell, both physically and mentally.1

Belief as the result of a free and rational choice

The attainment of belief, Nursi contends, is part of the ‘test’ that man undergoes simply by dint of the fact that he is human. Man is put on earth in order to understand what he is and where he comes from; his test is to realise his true Source, which would not be possible were he not immersed in the realm of contingent creation. And since it is part of his test, belief is not something which man is able acquire without effort. Since belief and accountability are a test, a trial, a competition within the bounds of man’s will, matters that are obscure, profound and in need of careful study and experiment cannot be obvious. They should not be so compelling that everyone has to affirm them willy-nilly. For in this way the Abu Bakrs may rise to the highest of the high and the Abu Jahls descend to the lowest of the low. If there were no will, there would be no accountability. It is because of this mystery and wisdom that miracles are displayed only rarely.2

Belief, then, depends on understanding issues that are not immediately obvious; otherwise the very notion of a ‘test’ would be meaningless. And the idea of a test presupposes, as Nursi points out, the existence of free will, for only those endowed with free will can attain belief. Belief, then, is the result of a choice, although clearly it is not something which is to be chosen at random or through imitation of others. Indeed, Nursi cautions on numerous occasions against the dangers of imitative (taqlīdī) belief, intimating that unless one comes to believe in God through investigation (tah.  qīq) and deliberation, using to the full one’s powers of reason, such belief will be practically worthless.3 On this, Nursi is at one with the vast majority of mainstream theologians, for whom imitation (taqlīd) in matters such as belief, which rely on the intellect (‘aql), is proscribed.4 Belief, however, does not speak to the intellect alone, Nursi tells us: all of man’s faculties need and are addressed by it: Belief (īmān) is not gained only through knowledge; many of the subtle faculties have their share of it. When food enters the stomach, it is distributed in various ways to various members. Similarly, after entering the stomach of the mind, the matters of faith that come through knowledge are absorbed by the spirit, heart, inner heart, soul and other subtle faculties; each receives its share according to its degree. If they do not receive their share, faith is deficient.5

If belief is to be true belief, then, it needs to transcend the mere intellectual and permeate the whole of man’s being: if the knowledge accumulated remains on the level of the intellect and does not reach the heart and other inner faculties, it will make submission (islām; taslīmiyya) to the will of God – which is a logical corollary of belief – problematic, if not impossible. Belief and submission are two different yet closely interconnected states, and according to Quranic teaching, both must be in place if man is to attain salvation.

284

  Belief and Unbelief

The difference between belief (īmān) and submission (islām)

A crucial aspect of Nursi’s understanding of belief is his emphasis on the essential difference between belief (īmān) and submission (islām), and on their interdependence as a requirement for human salvation. For Nursi, external submission to the will of God is authentic only when predicable on the possession of genuine and constantly revivified belief; indeed, the ‘externalia’ of Islam – deeds of devotion such as prayer, fasting and the like – are considered devoid of meaning without it. Belief, Nursi contends, must be based on investigation (tah. qīq), while investigation must come through deliberation and contemplation: without knowledge, belief is unattainable, and without belief, external acts of submission are practically worthless. Furthermore, belief is not something static: it is subject to increase and decrease, and thus must be worked on and revivified continuously. Since man himself and the world in which he lives are being continuously renewed, he needs constantly to renew his belief. For in reality each individual human being consists of many individuals. He may be considered as a different individual to the number of years of his life, or rather to the number of the days or even the hours of his life. For, since a single individual is subject to time, he is like a model and each passing day clothes him in the form of another individual.6

In the Nursian schema, belief should lead logically and organically to submission, but the fact is that not every believer in God will necessarily express submission to the Divine will in the form of adherence to the external acts of devotion. Nursi describes such an individual as a ‘non-submitted believer’ (gayr-ı müslim bir mümin) or someone who accepts intellectually the principles of belief, but who may not perform prayers or fast.7 In other words, he or she may embrace the fundamentals of belief - Divine unity, prophethood and the existence of the Last Day - but fall short of implementing the so-called ‘pillars of Islam’. By the same token, not everyone who claims to adhere to Islam is necessarily a believer in the true sense of the word. Nursi is adamant that both components – belief and submission – must be present as criteria for salvation: Just as Islam without belief cannot be the means of salvation, neither can belief without Islam be the means of salvation.8

Indeed, that belief should exist without external submission is anathema to Nursi, for ‘Islam is taking the part of the truth and is submission and obedience to it’.9 The possibility of external submission without inner conviction is highlighted clearly by the Quran in its verse on the opportunistic profession of belief made by the tribe known as the Banū Asad: The wandering Arabs say: We believe. Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Ye believe not, but rather say “We submit,” for the faith hath not yet entered into your hearts. Yet, if ye obey Allah and His messenger, He will not withhold from you aught of (the reward of ) your deeds. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.10

Although the performance of ‘deeds of righteousness’ - indicators par excellence of external submission – are assumed to be the concomitants of belief, this verse shows that they are not

285

The Qur’an Revealed  necessarily so. In reality, rites and rituals such as prayer and fasting are in and of themselves no guaranteed indication of belief, as the Quranic response to the Banu Asad shows. Nursi describes those whose practice of the ‘pillars of Islam’ is founded on considerations other than true inner conviction as ‘unbelieving Muslims’.11 Similarly, as Nursi’s use of the terms involved shows, there are two modalities of submission: the formal, which for ease of understanding we can call ‘upper case-I Islam’, that is, Islam the religion; and the internal, or ‘lower case-i islām ’, which signifies the submission of the heart and spirit in response to the information accepted by the intellect. The distinction between Islam and islām confirms the possibility firstly that some Muslims are not actually muslim in the Quranic sense of the word; and, secondly, that some nonMuslims may also be considered muslim. While this more nuanced approach to the issue of the distinction between belief and submission is not discussed directly by Nursi, it is clear reading between his lines that he was well aware of the difference.12 While Nursi’s teachings on belief and submission are significant on a purely religious level, they also offer important insights into the socio-cultural development of Muslim society as a whole, particularly in the context of the development of Muslim scholarship. For the belief/submission issue not only renders explicable the division of the ‘religious sciences’ into the ‘rational’ (‘aqlī) and the ‘scriptural’ (naqlī), but it also helps to explain why the faqīh or jurist has been able to attain such a high profile in the Muslim world of learning, and why the pursuit of Muslim law and legal theory has historically been more prevalent and certainly more popular than any other scholarly endeavour.13 We turn now to the heart of Nursi’s discourse on belief, which concerns not its formal or technical aspects but rather its innate virtues, as well as the consequences that it has for those who attain or reject it.

On the meanings and virtues of belief We have indeed created man in the best of moulds; then do We abase him (to be) the lowest of the low - except such as believe and do righteous deeds...14 Through the light of belief, man rises to the highest of the high and acquires a value worthy of Paradise. And through the darkness of unbelief, he descends to the lowest of the low and falls to a position fit for Hell. For belief connects man to the All-Glorious Maker; it is a relation. Thus, man acquires value by virtue of the Divine art and inscriptions of the dominical Names which become apparent in him through belief. Unbelief severs the relation, and due to that severance the dominical art is concealed. His value then is only in respect to the matter of his physical being. And since this matter has only a transitory, passing, temporary animal life, its value is virtually nothing. 15

Belief as connection

Belief, Nursi contends, is primarily about forging or, more precisely, uncovering the connection between man and God. Without this connection, man’s actual value is, he claims, no greater than the net worth of his material components. He explains by way of an analogy: For example: among man’s arts, the value of the materials used and that of the art are entirely different. Sometimes they are equal, sometimes the material is more valuable,

286

  Belief and Unbelief and sometimes it happens that fifty dollars’ worth of art is to be found in material that is hardly worth more than fifty cents. Sometimes, even, an antique work of art is worth a million while the material of which it is composed is not worth five dollars. If such a work of art is taken to the antiques market and ascribed to a brilliant and accomplished artist of former times, and announced mentioning the artist and that art, it may be sold for a million dollars. Whereas if it is taken to the scrap-dealers, the only price received will be for the five dollars’ worth of iron. Thus, man is such an antique work of art of Almighty God. He is a most subtle and graceful miracle of His power whom He created to manifest all his Names and their inscriptions, in the form of a miniature specimen of the universe. If the light of belief enters his being, all the meaningful inscriptions on him may be read. As one who believes, he reads them consciously, and through that relation causes others to read them. That is to say, the dominical art in man becomes apparent through meanings like, “I am the creature and artefact of the All-Glorious Maker. I manifest His mercy and munificence.” That is, belief, which consists of being connected to the Maker, makes apparent all the works of art in man. Man’s value is in accordance with that dominical art and by virtue of being a mirror to the Eternally Besought One. In this respect insignificant man becomes God’s addressee and a guest of the Sustainer worthy of Paradise and superior to all other creatures.16

As Nursi’s analogy attempts to show, the value of a work of art is commensurate not with the materials out of which they have been made but with the stature of the artist involved. For example, the canvas upon which Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was painted may, as canvas, be worth next to nothing, whereas the painting itself is considered to be priceless. Similarly, while a large boulder on a mountainside may be considered worthless, a similarly shaped rock standing in the circle at Stonehenge is, on account of its importance as a cultural artefact of great antiquity, considered priceless. Artistic value, then, has nothing to do with the objects themselves, which in fact may be insubstantial and of little practical use, and everything to do with the cultural importance they are given, be it on account of their age, the fame and reputation of those who painted or fashioned them, or both. Connection, then, is all. Moving to man, when we total the monetary value of the elements in a typical human body, we arrive at a net worth of little more than six or seven dollars.17 From a purely material perspective, then, an average human being has little intrinsic value, and can certainly not compete in terms of artistic or cultural importance with those works of art which are deemed priceless and upon which a great deal of commitment and passion are lavished simply on account of what they represent. However, Nursi argues that when seen through the prism of belief, the value accorded to man changes. No longer is he reducible to little more than a bucket of water, two square metres of skin and a few handfuls of calcium, magnesium and other such elements. When seen through the eye of belief, man is appreciated for what he really is: a Divine work of art which represents and reflects all of the attributes of perfection possessed by its Artist. Seen through the eye of belief, which connects all things to a Creator, man and his world are elevated and given a value that exceeds by far any work of art or product of cultural endeavour produced by man. In short, belief reveals man to be far more than the sum of his physical parts: it reveals him to be

287

The Qur’an Revealed  nothing less than the locus of manifestation par excellence of all of the Divine Names and Attributes. However, should unbelief, which consists of the severance of the relation, enter man’s being, then all those meaningful inscriptions of the Divine Names are plunged into darkness and become illegible. For if the Maker is forgotten, the spiritual aspects which look to Him will not be comprehended, they will be as though reversed. The majority of those meaningful sublime arts and elevated inscriptions will be hidden. The remainder, those that may be seen with the eye, will be attributed to lowly causes, nature and chance, and will become utterly devoid of value. While they are all brilliant diamonds, they become dull pieces of glass. His importance looks only to his animal, physical being. And as we said, the aim and fruit of his physical being is only to pass a brief and partial life as the most impotent, needy and grieving of animals. Then it decays and departs. See how unbelief destroys human nature and transforms it from diamonds into coal.18

Seen through the eye of unbelief, however, man’s status as representative of the Divine becomes obscured. Nursi’s contention notwithstanding, it is not that his connection with God is actually severed; rather it is ignored, dismissed or covered over, and treated in effect as though it were actually non-existent. The Arabic verb kafara, from which the words kufr (unbelief ) and kāfir (unbeliever) are derived, actually means ‘to cover over’, and this describes quite literally what happens when belief fails to obtain: all links between man and his Creator are ‘covered over’ to the extent that, for the observer in question, they no longer exist. However this happens – whether it is through the inability to believe or the obdurate unwillingness to countenance the sovereignty of anything other than the self – is relatively unimportant, for the result is more or less identical: man is no longer seen as the locus of manifestation of God’s names and bearer of the Divine trust. Unbelief does not reject the notion of certain perfections, but it does uproot them from Divine soil, planting them instead in the ground of man’s instinctual soul, where they are appropriated as man’s own belongings. However, when the connection between man and God is cut, so too is the connection between man and eternity, and thus even though disbelief may make man the centre of the universe, it cannot, as Nursi puts it elsewhere, provide him with any answers to the ‘awesome silence of the grave’.19 If there is no connection made through belief, all of the wondrous signs and symbols that God places there to be read and deciphered will remain locked, unfathomable and meaningless forever. Severing the connection between himself and God, then, reduces the disbeliever to a tragic animal with delusions of grandeur; to a being which, owing to its eventual annihilation, has little if any existential value at all. Belief, then, is not so much the forging of a connection between oneself and one’s creator as the acknowledgment and acceptance of the link between God and the cosmos which exists – and has always existed – by virtue of the fact that the created realm is His place of manifestation. Furthermore, unbelief is not so much the actual cutting of a connection between oneself and the Source of one’s being as the inability or, more usually, the unwillingness to acknowledge the link which may indeed be denied and covered over, but which can never in fact be severed.

288

  Belief and Unbelief

Belief as light

Nursi then elaborates upon the opening sentence of his discourse on the virtues of belief in which he describes the latter as ‘light’. Just as belief is a light which illuminates man and makes legible all the missives of the Eternally Besought One inscribed upon him, so too it illuminates the universe, and delivers the past and the future from darkness. 20

He explains what he means by the illuminative power of belief by invoking a waking vision he once had concerning the meaning of the verse God is the Protector of those who believe; He leads them out of darkness into light. 3 The vision was as follows: I saw an awesome bridge built between two high mountains situated opposite one another. Beneath the bridge was a valley of great depth. I was on the bridge. A dense darkness had enveloped every part of the world. I looked to my right and saw what seemed to be a vast grave swathed in an unending dense gloom. I looked to my left and as though saw violent storms and calamities gathering amid terrifying waves of blackness. I looked beneath the bridge and imagined I saw a profound abyss. I had a dim torch in the face of this terrifying darkness. I used it and could see a little with its light. A most horrific situation appeared to me. In fact, such awful dragons, lions and monsters appeared around me and on the bridge in front of me that I exclaimed: “Oh! This torch brings me only trouble!”, and I angrily cast it to the ground and broke it. Then on smashing it, the darkness suddenly dispersed as though I had turned on the switch for a huge electric lamp that lit up the whole world. Everywhere was filled with the lamp’s light. It showed everything as it was in reality. I saw that the bridge I had seen was a highway through a plain passing over even ground. The vast grave I had seen on my right I realized consisted from top to bottom of beautiful, verdant gardens and gatherings for worship, service, conversation and the remembrance of God under the direction of luminous men. The precipices and peaks on my left which I had imagined to be tempestuous and stormy I now saw fleetingly to be a vast, lovely and elevated place of feasting, recreation and enjoyment behind mountains that were adorned and pleasant. And the creatures I had thought to be terrifying monsters and dragons I saw were familiar domestic animals like camels, oxen, sheep and goats. Declaring, “All praise be to God for the light of belief,” I recited the verse God is the Protector of those who believe; He leads them out of darkness into light. I then awoke from my vision.21

According to Nursi’s own interpretation of the vision, the two high mountains represent the world and the ‘intermediate realm’ (barzakh) between this world and the next. The bridge, he says, symbolises the road of life, to the right of which lies the past and to the left, the future. The small torch represents the human ego, which, stubbornly reliant on its own knowledge, believes in its own self-sufficiency and feels no need for the guidance offered by Divine revelation. The frightening creatures which appeared to him as he crossed the bridge symbolise the vicissitudes, pressures and fears of earthly life. What the vision was trying to tell him, Nursi believes, was that one who relies on his own ego will inevitably fall headlong into the darkness of ignorance and misguidance: equipped with a tiny torch that produces

289

The Qur’an Revealed  only the faintest of lights, he is thus unable to see things as they really are. Thus the past appears to be a huge grave, immersed in a depressing gloom that tells of non-existence, while the future appears as a stormy and desolate wasteland, governed arbitrarily by blind chance, plagued with painful events and peopled with monsters. To see reality through the prism of the unregenerate ego, Nursi says, is to see it in the dark, and to see it in the dark is really not to see it at all. Those who approach the world in this way, he asserts, manifest the meanings of the Quranic verse And those who reject belief, their protectors are the evil ones; they lead them out of light into darkness.22 Belief, however, turns this whole scenario on its head. If man accepts Divine guidance, Nursi says, and allows belief to enter his heart and cleanse it of the tyranny imposed by his egoism and inflated self of sense-worth, he will encounter the kind of world that appeared in the vision once the ‘torch’ of the self was smashed. For then the universe will suddenly take on the colour of day and be filled with Divine light. The world will recite the verse God is the light of the heavens and the earth.23 Then he will see with the eye of the heart that the past is not a vast grave but where the groups of purified spirits who each century having performed their duties of worship under the leadership of a prophet or saint exclaim, “God is Most Great!” on completion of the duties of their lives, and fly to elevated abodes, moving on to the past. He will look to the left, and through the light of belief distinguish in the distance a feastingplace of the Most Merciful set up in palaces of bliss in the gardens of Paradise, beyond the mountainous revolutions of the Intermediate Realm and the hereafter. And he will realize that the storms and earthquakes and tempestuous events are all submissive officials; he will understand that they are the means for instances of wisdom which, though apparently harsh, are in fact most gentle, like the storms and rains of spring. He will even see death to be the introduction to eternal life, and the grave, the door to everlasting happiness.24

From the Nursian perspective, then, while unbelief is a deliberate obfuscation of the truth, a ‘covering up’ which plunges the vast ‘book of creation’ into darkness and makes it unintelligible, belief is an illuminative, enlightening force which rends the tenebrous veils of unknowing and makes all of the Divine inscriptions on man and the universe readable and amenable to interpretation. Nursi’s likening of belief to light reminds one of the very first revelation vouchsafed to Muhammad in which he was commanded to ‘Read!’ His response – ‘How should I read?’ – was met with a Divine reiteration: “Read, read in the name of your Lord…”. Man cannot help but read the ‘book of creation’, but from a Quranic – and thus, by extension, a Nursian – perspective, the ‘book of creation’ makes sense only when it is read ‘in the name of God’. Muhammad’s original protestation – ‘How should I read?’ – may well be an allusion to his alleged illiteracy, but it is equally likely that when he asked how he should read, what he really wanted to know, in fact, was how he should interpret. The Divine response confirmed that he must interpret the ‘book of creation’ in the name of his Lord. In short, through the light of Muhammad’s belief in God, the true meaning of the universe would be made apparent to him: any veils which were on him would be cast away and he would be able to see things as they truly were. His mission henceforth would be to encourage others to see things as they truly are, through the prism of belief, which,

290

  Belief and Unbelief according to Nursi, banishes all shadows and gloom and enables man to read the book of creation as it is meant to be read.

Belief as trust

Belief is not only light, Nursi avers, it is also strength: one who acquires true belief is able to ‘challenge the whole universe’ and alleviate the pressure of events in accordance with the degree of his belief. Saying, “I place my trust in God,” he travels through the mountainous waves of events in the ship of life in complete safety. He entrusts all his burdens to the hand of power of the Absolutely Powerful One, voyages through the world in ease, then takes his rest in the Intermediate Realm. Later he may fly up to Paradise in order to enter eternal happiness. Otherwise, if he does not rely on God, rather than flying, the burdens of the world will drag him down to the lowest of the low. That is to say, belief necessitates affirmation of Divine unity, affirmation of Divine unity necessitates submission to God, submission to God necessitates reliance on God, and reliance on God necessarily leads to happiness in this world and the next. But do not misunderstand this: reliance on God is not to reject causes altogether; it is rather to know that causes are a veil to the hand of power and to have recourse to them. Knowing that attempting causes is a sort of active prayer, it is to seek the effects only from Almighty God, to recognize that the results are from Him alone, and to be thankful to Him.25

The fact that the word īmān, translated traditionally as ‘belief ’, is derived from the verb āmana, one of the key meanings of which is ‘to trust’, is often overlooked. The Quran introduces itself as a book for those ‘who have belief in the Unseen’, which is arguably impossible without the investment of a great deal of trust in the existence of that which lies beyond the veil of the corporeal world. However, to trust in the existence of God – in other words, to believe that He exists – is one thing; to trust in God Himself is another entirely. It is here that trust finds expression in the Arabic word tawakkul, derived from the verb tawakkala, which means, among other things, ‘to rely upon’, ‘to submit to’ and ‘to put oneself in someone’s hands’. Upon attaining belief in God, Nursi contends, the logical corollary is to submit to Him completely in His capacity as al-Wakīl, or ‘the One to whom all affairs are to be entrusted’. Submission, of course, does not entail the paralysis of human will and the total shutdown of personal endeavour. What it does mean, however, is that instead of relying on the ‘tiny torch’ of the ego to light one’s way through the vicissitudes of earthly life, one places one’s confidence in the light of revelation and the guidance of God. It also means that instead of attributing any kind of real power to material causes – none of which, as Nursi demonstrates in Chapter Three, has the power either to help or to hinder – one should place one’s trust in God alone. Causes must be seen for what they are, namely means to which, in accordance with Divine wisdom, one has recourse when attempting to act. Causes are not to be ignored, for that would signal what Nursi calls ‘lazy trust’ – a precursor to fatalism and psycho-spiritual inertia. To place one’s total trust in God and to see causes as the gloves which cover the ‘hands’ of Divine power

291

The Qur’an Revealed  is to unburden oneself not only of fear of the future but also of the back-breaking expectations and ultimate feelings of failure that come from egoistic self-reliance. Again, Nursi elaborates upon his explanation by way of a parabolic analogy: Those who place their trust in God and those who do not, resemble the two men in this story: One time two men loaded heavy burdens onto both their backs and heads and, buying tickets, boarded a large ship. As soon as they boarded it, one of them left his load on the deck, and sitting on it guarded it. The other, however, since he was both stupid and arrogant, did not put down his load. When he was told: “Leave that heavy load on the deck and be comfortable,” he replied: “No, I won’t put it down, it might get lost. I am strong; I’ll guard my property by carrying it on my head and back.” He was told again: “This reliable royal ship which is carrying you and us is stronger; it can protect it better than you. You may get giddy and fall into the sea together with your load. Anyway you will gradually lose your strength, and by degrees those loads will get heavier and your bent back and brainless head will not have the power to bear them. And if the Captain sees you in this state, he will either say that you are crazy and expel you from the ship, or he will think you are ungrateful and he will order you to be put into prison. Also you are making a fool of yourself in front of everyone. For the perceptive see that you are displaying weakness through your conceit, impotence through your pride, and abasement and hypocrisy through your pretence, and have thus made yourself a laughing-stock in the eyes of the people. Everyone’s laughing at you.” At this the unfortunate man came to his senses. He put down his load on the deck and sat on it. He said to the other: “Ah! May God be pleased with you. I’ve been saved from that difficulty, from prison, and from making a fool of myself.” O man who does not place his trust in God! You too must come to your senses like that man and place your trust in Him, so that you may be delivered from begging before all the universe, trembling before every event, from pride, from making a fool of yourself, from misery in the hereafter, and from the prison of the pressures of this world...26

Belief, then, engenders trust – but trust in God rather than in causes. And trust in God brings with it courage and the ability to withstand the vicissitudes of earthly existence.

Belief as strength through acceptance of impotence

Throughout the Risale-i Nur, Said Nursi highlights time and time again the fact that in and of himself, man has absolutely nothing that he can call his own. As a finite, limited and contingent being, his very existence and all of the attributes that appear to inhere in him are bestowed upon him by the Creator. Belief, Nursi now asserts, entails the acceptance by man of his own existential poverty, together with the acknowledgement of the fact that if he is to grow, develop and progress in life, he can do so only through the gift of Divine succour. Through belief in God and through invocation, man is able to turn his impotence into a source of spiritual strength, which supports him and helps him to progress in a manner commensurate with His God-given attributes and in a way that is in accordance

292

  Belief and Unbelief with Divine will. Nursi explains by way of a comparison between man and the animal kingdom: Belief makes man truly human; indeed, it makes man into a king. Since this is so, man’s basic duty is belief and supplication. Unbelief, on the other hand, makes man into an extremely impotent beast. Out of thousands of proofs of this matter, the differences in the ways animals and man come into the world are a clear indication and decisive proof. Yes, these differences show that humanity becomes humanity through belief. For when animals come into the world, they come complete in all points in accordance with their abilities as though having been perfected in another world; that is, they are sent. They learn all the conditions of their lives, their relationships with the universe, and the laws of life in either two hours or two days or two months, and become proficient in them. Animals like sparrows and bees acquire in twenty days the power to survive and proficiency in their actions that man only acquires in twenty years; that is, they are inspired with them. This means that the animals’ fundamental duty is not to be perfected through learning and progress by acquiring knowledge, nor to seek help and offer supplications through displaying their impotence, but in accordance with their abilities to work and act. Their duty is active worship. As for man, he needs to learn everything when he comes into the world; he is ignorant, and cannot even learn completely the conditions of life in twenty years. Indeed, he needs to go on learning till the end of his life. Also he is sent to the world in a most weak and impotent form, and can only rise to his feet in one or two years. Only in fifteen years can he distinguish between harm and benefit, and with the help of mankind’s experience attract things advantageous to him and avoid others that are harmful. 27

Basing his argument on the unspoken assertion that the existence of the animal kingdom is partly in order for man to understand not only himself but also his Creator, Nursi makes an interesting distinction between human beings and other creatures. He first points out that while animals, like mankind, are not exempt from having to learn how to survive in the world, the time it takes them to do this is considerably shorter than in the case of human beings, and their capacities for growth and development – their ability to adapt to changing circumstances over time notwithstanding – are clearly more limited. In other words there is a ‘ceiling’ of optimum progress or development that an animal can reach – a limit that Nursi would call their ‘point of perfection’. Again, while animals may adapt over long periods of time, it is reasonable to assume that bees today are doing what bees did a thousand years ago, or that the nests built by sparrows in the twenty-first century are more or less identical to the nests built by sparrows at the time of the Biblical patriarchs. The progress and development of animals is therefore limited, and indicative, Nursi says, of the fact that their sojourn in this earthly realm is not primarily about being perfected continuously throughout their lives by the constant accumulation of knowledge and the pursuit of progress. The human situation, however, is very different. What animals are able to accomplish in a relatively short time, man can accomplish only in years, if not decades. And while there is a ceiling to his physical abilities, to his desire and capacity for material and supramaterial progress there is no limit. Humankind, by default, has immortal longings and

293

The Qur’an Revealed  infinite desires, and thus, unlike the denizens of the animal kingdom, his stay on earth is indeed primarily about the constant accumulation of knowledge in order to move from one stage of development to the next. And since the accumulation of knowledge presupposes a prior state of unknowing, man’s duty is not only to acquire knowledge but also to recognise his own ignorance and to acknowledge the true Source of that which he seeks in order to progress. This means that man’s innate duty is to be perfected through learning and to proclaim his worship of God and servitude to Him through supplication. That is to say, it is to know the answers of the questions: “Through whose compassion is my life so wisely administered in this way? Through whose generosity am I so kindly raised? Through whose graciousness am I so delicately nurtured and ministered to?” It is to beseech and supplicate the Provider of Needs through the tongue of impotence and poverty; it is to seek from Him. It is to fly to the high station of worship and servitude to God on the wings of impotence and poverty. This means that man came to this world to be perfected by means of knowledge and supplication. In regard to his nature and abilities everything is tied to knowledge. And the foundation, source, light and spirit of all true knowledge is knowledge of God, and its essence and basis is belief in God.28

Animals, Nursi says, worship God not by means of self-perfection through knowledge or the conscious attainment of belief, but rather by doing what they were created to do. Man, on the other hand, who possesses self-awareness in a way that no other creature does, has to seek knowledge constantly in order to progress and to work towards perfection, which is his objective in life. But although material progress is an inevitable concomitant of all serious human endeavour, the perfection that Nursi postulates as the goal of human life is spiritual and concerns man’s existential status as one who stands in absolute need before One Who has no needs at all. Man’s innate impotence is not only the impetus for movement and progression, it is also the means whereby he can come to know the true Source of all that he is and all that he has. Man’s existential poverty is the platform, Nursi says, from which man may, through belief and invocation, launch himself spiritually towards the knowledge and love of the Creator, Who makes all things possible for him. Belief, then, consists in recognising one’s impotence for what it is and acknowledging that the only One who is able to provide what is needed for one’s material and spiritual growth is God. Theoretically, such belief will then form the bedrock upon which man’s earthly life is built, enabling him to grow and progress in a way that is in conformity both with his own innate disposition and with Divine will. And with belief comes supplication, which entails ‘calling on’ God – both through correct action and verbal entreaty – in order not only to express one’s worshipfulness but also to gain strength from the recognition of the true Source of all attributes of perfection. Furthermore, since man is subject to endless tribulations and afflicted with innumerable enemies despite his boundless impotence, and suffers from endless needs and has innumerable desires despite his boundless poverty, after belief his fundamental innate duty is supplication. As for supplication, it is the basis of worship of God and servitude to Him. In order to secure a desire or wish he cannot obtain, a child will either cry or ask

294

  Belief and Unbelief for it, that is, he will supplicate through the tongue of his impotence either actively or verbally, and will be successful in securing it. In the same way, man is like a delicate, petted child in the world of living creatures. He has to either weep at the Court of the Most Merciful and Compassionate One through his weakness and impotence, or supplicate through his poverty and need, so that the things he wants may be made subject to him, or he may offer thanks for their being made so. Otherwise like a silly child who creates a fuss over a fly, saying: “With my own strength I subjugate things it is not possible to subjugate and things a thousand times more powerful, and I make them obey me through my own ideas and measures,” he displays ingratitude for the bounties. And just as this is contrary to man’s innate nature, so he makes himself deserving of severe punishment.29

Belief thus turns impotence into a source of strength, Nursi avers, since it makes one admit one’s existential poverty and offer supplication. Unbelief, however, may encourage a façade of strength, but it will never be more than a façade: the existential poverty will always be there, paining unregenerate man by reminding him of his innate nothingness, and forcing him to rely on material causes, none of which is in reality able to do anything for him, not least make him truly human in the way that belief can. Refusing to recognise the true Source of his being, unregenerate man attempts to cover over his existential poverty by appropriating God’s attributes of perfection as his own, muddling through life with neither a true moral compass nor an absolute criterion of truth to guide his way, progressing materially perhaps but achieving no kind of spiritual perfection – man’s true objective – whatsoever.

The consequences of belief and unbelief

Nursi’s other major discourse on belief and unbelief in the Risale-i Nur is in one sense an elaboration of what has gone before. However, rather than focus primarily on the nature of belief and unbelief and what they denote, he now looks at the very real consequences of those states of mind for those who choose to gravitate towards them. In other words, he deals here not so much with what belief and unbelief signify as with the happiness and misery that they cause to the believer and unbeliever respectively. Taken out of context, it would be relatively easy to mistake Nursi’s exposition of the merits and demerits of belief and unbelief for a form of the logical fallacy known as argumentum ad consequentiam, or ‘appeal to consequences’. This is a line of reasoning which posits that a premise is true or false based on whether that premise leads to advantageous or disadvantageous consequences. An ‘appeal to consequences’ is fallacious because whether the consequence is advantageous or not does not address the truth value of the premise. However, in these sections of the Risale, Nursi is addressing not the truth value of the premise but its desirability, and thus there is nothing fallacious about his particular line of reasoning here. Man has been created on the most excellent of patterns and has been given most comprehensive abilities; he has been cast into an arena of trial and examination in which he may rise or fall to stations, ranks and degrees from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, from the earth to the Divine Throne, and from minute particles to the sun.

295

The Qur’an Revealed  He has been sent to this world as a miracle of Divine Power, the result of creation, and a wonder of Divine art before whom have been opened two roads leading either to infinite ascent or infinite descent. 30

From the Quranic perspective, man was created ‘on the most excellent of patterns’ (ah. san al-taqwīm) and as vicegerent of God Himself. According to the Quranic creation narrative, out of all entities it was man who accepted the Divine ‘Trust’ – the responsibility, from which all other beings shrank, of being the most comprehensive mirror in creation for the manifestation of the Divine. Yet while this exalted position is his by birthright, it is a position which he occupies in potentia. In other words, he possesses the capabilities to attain that rank – and, indeed, to surpass the angels in excellence – but he cannot achieve this without perfecting himself with belief, self-knowledge, God-awareness and invocation. Nor can he stay still: man is destined either to rise or to fall. Through belief he may rise to the highest of the high and through unbelief he may descend to lowest of the low, but he cannot stand motionless or remain neutral. At the heart of this ceaseless motion, Nursi postulates, is man’s innate desire for the infinite and the everlasting. Man’s needs spread through every part of the world, and his desires extend to eternity. Just as he wants a flower, so he wants the spring. Just as he desires a garden, so does he also desire everlasting Paradise. Just as he longs to see a friend, so does he long to see the AllBeauteous One of Glory. Just as in order to visit one he loves who lives somewhere else, he is in need for his beloved’s door to be opened to him, so too in order to visit the ninety-nine per cent of his friends who have travelled to the intermediate realm and so be saved from eternal separation, he needs to seek refuge at the court of an Absolutely Powerful One Who will close the door of this huge world and open the door of the hereafter, which is an exhibition of wonders, and remove this world and establish the hereafter in its place. Thus for man in this position the only True Object of Worship will be One in Whose hand are the reins of all things, with Whom are the treasuries of all things, Who sees all things and is present everywhere, who is beyond space, exempt from impotence, free of fault and far above all defect: an All-Powerful One of Glory, an All-Compassionate One of Beauty, an All-Wise One of Perfection.31

Given that man is created with the impress of all of the Divine attributes of perfection upon him, and given that being a mirror to God’s names makes him enamoured of those names and instils within him a constant craving for them, it is only logical, Nursi says, that man form a connection with the only One Who is able to fulfil man’s desire for the everlasting. For the infinite cannot be found in the finite; the absolute cannot be acquired from that which is limited and contingent. To believe in a God Who is able to give man that which, by dint of his sheer existential poverty he stands so much in need of, would seem, Nursi says, to be the only option open to him if he is to avoid misery and perdition. O man, if you are the slave of Him alone, you will earn a place superior to all creatures. But if you hold back from this servitude to Him, you will become an abased slave to impotent creatures. If you rely on your ego and own power and abandoning reliance on God and supplication, deviate into pride and boasting, then you will fall lower than an ant or bee in regard to goodness and creation, and become weaker than a spider or a fly. You will

296

  Belief and Unbelief become heavier than a mountain in regard to evil and destruction, and more harmful than a pestilence.32

If man does not believe in God, it is not that he believes in nothing at all: since by nature he is a being who cannot help but pledge his allegiance to something, he will, if he chooses not to rely on God, rely on his own self instead. If man’s vision is not theocentric, it can only be anthropocentric: for unregenerate man, man is the measure of all things and the very centre of the universe. Belief, then, if not invested in the Creator, is invested in the created. Freed from what he believes to be the needless restraints of belief in one Creator, he becomes shackled instead to the whims and desires not only of his own ego but also the egos of all those to whom he must bow down in order to gain validation, as well as to the numerous, if not numberless, material causes upon which he has no option but to place his reliance. Yes, O man! You have two aspects: one is that of creation, goodness, action and positivity. The other is the aspect of destruction, non-existence, evil, negativity and passivity. In regard to the first aspect, you are lower than a bee or a sparrow and weaker than a spider or fly. Whereas in regard to the second aspect, you surpass the mountains, earth and skies; you take on a burden before which they expressed their impotence and from which they shrank, and you assume a sphere more extensive and vaster than them. For when you create and do good, you are able to do so only to the extent of your own power and strength and to the degree your hand can reach. But when you commit evil and destruction, then your evil overwhelms and your destruction spreads.33

Since goodness (khayr) is from God alone, and from one perspective constitutes what may be termed the ‘default setting’ of creation, man, who is unable to create anything, cannot be said to be the author of good in any meaningful sense of the term. As we have seen in this and previous chapters, man’s existential poverty means that, since he is unable to create anything of his own accord, ultimately he possesses nothing more than the ability to choose between right and wrong, good and evil. To believe, and to submit to the Divine will, is to choose that which is right and good, but this does not mean that right and good emanate from man himself. In choosing that which is right and good, he is merely declaring himself to be at one with Divine will, to which all that is right and good are attributable. Man is therefore incapable, existentially, of doing good, for good can be done only by God, although clearly he is capable of desiring that which is good – otherwise his free will would be negated and the whole notion of a Divine ‘test’ rendered meaningless. Man is also incapable, existentially, of doing evil, firstly because he cannot create anything and secondly because evil, as a privation, is not something anyway that can be created. What distinguishes man from the rest of creation, however, is his seemingly limitless ability to desire evil, which, as the absence of good, has no external existence but does have an external reality, and one which consists of limitless degrees of lack and privation. Now Nursi points out in the preceding passage that while man may ‘create and do good’, he is able to do so only to the extent of his individual power and reach, which at first glance would seem to contradict the notion that creation and goodness are from God alone. However, this would appear to be a form of non-pejorative linguistic condescension: man does not in fact create, and doing good as far as he is concerned actually means not doing bad, but since this reality is not immediately accessible to all, Nursi uses language which,

297

The Qur’an Revealed  while not ideal, is perfectly acceptable so long as it is clear to whom the good is ultimately attributable. Written to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, the Quran also uses this particular kind of ‘condescension’ (tanazzul) on numerous occasions. For example it talks of God as being the ‘best of creators’ (ah. san al-khāliqīn), when in reality it is amply clear from numerous other verses that there is no creator other than God.34 Again, in a sense this kind of phraseology falls short of the ideal, but so long as the underlying truth is perceived, not only does it make complex concepts accessible to the widest possible audience, but it also avoids cumbersome and frankly unnecessary iterations of God’s sole creatorship, which in any case is taken as given. When Nursi says here that man’s ability to create and do good is limited to the extent of his individual power and reach, this is presumably to show as wide an audience as possible how constraining his limitation actually is, but without robbing him of all apparent power and thereby over-complicating an already somewhat difficult subject. The deeply destructive nature of unbelief, which is a refusal to assent to the Divine will and the Source of all goodness, is spelt out by Nursi in no uncertain terms: For example, unbelief is an evil, a destruction, an absence of affirmation. But that single evil comprises insulting the whole universe, belittling all the Divine Names and abusing all humanity. For these beings have elevated positions and important duties; they are dominical missives, Divine mirrors and Divine officials. But unbelief dismisses them from their rank of being mirrors, officials charged with duties and bearing meanings, and reduces them to the level of futility and being the playthings of chance. And through the destruction of death and separation, it lowers them to the degree of being swiftly decaying ephemeral matter lacking all importance and value, to being nothing. So too through denial it insults the Divine Names, the inscriptions, manifestations and beauties of which are to be seen throughout the universe and in the mirrors of beings. And it casts down to a position more abased and weaker, more powerless and needy than the lowliest transient animal the one who holds the rank of God’s vicegerent on earth, known as man. For man is a well-composed ode of wisdom proclaiming the manifestations of the Sacred Divine Names, and a seed-like self-evident miracle of Divine power containing all the members of an eternal tree, and who, on assuming the ‘Supreme Trust,’ rose to being higher than the earth, sky and mountains and gained superiority over the angels. It reduces him to the level of being a common sign-board lacking all meaning, confused and swiftly decaying.35

It becomes evident in the above passage that Nursi considers belief and unbelief to be linked inextricably to the philosophical concept-pair of the ‘self-referential’ (ma‘nā-i ismī) and the ‘Other-indicative’ (ma‘nā-i h. arf ī).36 In other words, belief in God entails seeing everything as indicating Him, while unbelief consists in considering everything as referring to itself and to itself alone. Seen through the eyes of belief, Nursi says, the whole of the cosmos is a gallery of signs and symbols, or a vast mirror reflecting the names of God; a world full of creatures who are like Divinely-written books and letters, telling about their Writer. Seen through the eyes of unbelief, however, the connection to the transcendent is obscured and, in the mind of the unbeliever, non-existent. Consequently, the world is reduced to no more than the sum of its parts – a sphere, hurtling through space, brought into being by blind chance and with no discernible purpose, and populated by beings whose ultimate value is

298

  Belief and Unbelief no greater than the net worth of the materials which make up their physical being. In short, unbelief rejects as false the notion that created beings have any purpose at all other than gratifying their own desires during their short, ultimately purposeless existence: instead of seeing the cosmos as a collection of wisely-penned verses which extol the awesomeness and majesty of its Creator, it sees each of the components of the cosmos as a hastily-scrawled billboard, proclaiming nothing other than its own self. And this, for Nursi, is an insult not only to the unbeliever’s own intelligence but to every entity in the cosmos. In short, in regard to destruction and evil, the evil-commanding soul may commit infinite crimes, but concerning creativity and good, its power is extremely little and partial. Yes, he may destroy a house in one day, while it cannot be built in a hundred. However, if the soul gives up egoism and seeks good and existence from Divine assistance, and if it foregoes evil and destruction and relying on the soul, and seeking forgiveness becomes a true slave of God, then it will manifest the meaning of the verse God will change their evil into good.9 Its infinite capacity for evil will be transformed into an infinite capacity for good. It will acquire the value of the Most Excellent of Patterns and ascend to the highest of the high. O heedless man! See Almighty God’s munificence and generosity! Although it would be justice to record one evil as a thousand and a single good deed as one or not at all, He records a single evil as one and a single good deed as ten, and sometimes as seventy or seven hundred, or even sometimes as seven thousand. You will also understand from this Remark that to be sent to Hell, which is so dreadful, is retribution for the deed and pure justice, while to be sent to Paradise is pure generosity.37

Belief, then, is capable of elevating man to the highest of the high, while unbelief may, if allowed free rein, drag him down to the lowest of the low. Through belief, man is saved from his own impotence by the very act of admitting to it, while through unbelief, man is in danger of damning himself eternally on account of his inability to acknowledge his existential poverty and rely on God, instead of relying on the fragile and ultimately treacherous resources of his own ego. If man relies on his ego and, making worldly life his goal, attempts to taste temporary pleasures while struggling to make his living, he becomes submerged within an extremely constricted sphere, then departs. All the members, systems and faculties given to him will testify against him at the resurrection and will bring a suit against him. Whereas if he knows himself to be a guest and spends the capital of his life within the sphere of permission of the Generous One of Whom he is the guest, he will strive for a long, eternal life within a broad sphere, then take his rest and ease. And later, he may rise to the highest of the high. Moreover, all the members and systems given to man will be happy with him and testify in favour of him in the hereafter. For sure, all the wonderful faculties given to men were not for this insignificant worldly life, but for an everlasting life of great significance. For if we compare man with the animals, we see that man is very rich in regard to faculties and members, a hundred times more so than the animals. But in the pleasures of worldly life and in animal life he falls a hundred times lower. For in each pleasure he receives is the trace of thousands of pains. The pains of the past and fears of the future and the pain

299

The Qur’an Revealed  at each pleasure’s passing spoil the enjoyment to had from them, and leave a trace in the pleasure. But animals are not like that. They receive pleasure with no pains. They take enjoyment with no sorrow. Neither the sorrows of the past cause them suffering, nor do the fears of the future distress them. They live peacefully, and offer thanks to their Creator. This means that if man, who is created on the most excellent of patterns, restricts his thought to the life of this world, he falls a hundred times lower than the lowest creature, even though he is created to be higher than the animals.38

300

Chapter Ten On Worship and Righteous Action I have not created jinn and men except to worship me 1

Introduction

Apart from the moral values and ethical norms which are expected to go hand-in-glove with belief in God, and to which believers are encouraged to aspire, the Quran also highlights the importance of ‘righteous deeds’, the performance of which constitutes an external, explicit and often very public expression of belief in God and, more importantly, submission to the Divine will. Indeed, the ‘key to salvation’ in Quranic terms is found not in belief alone but in belief which is complemented by righteous action: there are numerous verses where the two components – ‘faith and works’, for want of a better term – are mentioned together: Those who believe, and do deeds of righteousness, and establish regular prayers and regular charity, will have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.2 But those who believe and do deeds of righteousness, We shall soon admit to Gardens, with rivers flowing beneath, - their eternal home.3 To those who believe and do deeds of righteousness hath Allah promised forgiveness and a great reward.4

The ‘deeds of righteousness’ that may spring to mind immediately for many are those such as the canonical prayer, the fast of Ramadan or the pilgrimage to Mecca – specific components of ‘Islamic orthopraxy’ which many would classify under the heading ‘religious acts’ or, indeed, ‘acts of worship’. However, while the Quran does mention – and, indeed, make obligatory - specific practices such as these, it places much greater emphasis on the nurturing in each individual of an attitude of submission, or, more precisely, a ‘sense of worshipfulness’ in all that he or she does, whether it is a formal, Quranically prescribed ‘act of worship’ or not. One may argue that from the Quranic perspective – and thus, by extension, in the Nursian view – the goal is not to ‘do Islamic acts’ but, rather, to render all of the acts one does Islamic. Neither the Quran as revelation, nor Nursi as its interpreter, accepts the human construct of a conceptual division between acts that are deemed ‘religious’, such as prayer, for example, or fasting, and acts that are somehow assumed to be ‘worldly’, ‘secular’ or ‘neutral’

301

The Qur’an Revealed  – acts which are quite clearly not ‘religious’ in the usual sense of the word, such as driving a car, washing clothes or shopping in the supermarket. For Nursi, as we shall see, all acts apart from those which have been expressly prohibited are sacred so long as they are underpinned by a sense of worshipfulness and are carried out sincerely for the sake of God alone, be they formal expressions of worship prescribed by the Quran, such as prayer and fasting, or seemingly mundane acts such as cooking, cleaning and sleeping. The key, for Nursi as for the Quran, is not to perform ‘sacred acts’ but to make all acts sacred. And by making all of one’s acts sacred, one makes one’s whole life sacred, thus fulfilling the criteria of the ‘Trust’, the dynamics and significance of which were discussed at length in Chapter Five. Islam is, therefore, designed to be a ‘whole way of life’, although clearly not along the lines envisaged by many contemporary Muslim ideologues: making Islam one’s whole way of life does not mean endeavouring to apply as many ‘Islamic laws’ to one’s life as possible. In fact, it has little to do with the implementation of ‘Islamic laws’ at all, as such. For there are many areas of man’s day-to-day existence for which neither the Quran nor the Prophetic sunna legislates in the sense of prescribing precise rules and regulations which are to be followed. That which the Quran does offer – and which Nursi emphasises - is guidance on how a believer may cultivate an attitude of conscious and willing submission which, if nurtured carefully, will imbue everything he or she does with the spirit of islām.

The ubiquity of submission

Before looking at the notion of the modes of worship and righteous action of mankind in particular, we should establish the context by exploring the Quranic notion of universal worship – namely the fact that every created being is said to be in a state of conscious submission to its Creator – and how Nursi explains this. There are a number of verses which discuss this directly or allude to it, including the following: Are you not aware that before God prostrate (yasjud) themselves all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth – the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the mountains, and the trees, and the beasts, and a great number among mankind? But a great number are such as are fit for punishment; and such as God shall disgrace, none can raise to honour; for, verily, God does what He wills.5 Do they seek for other than the Religion of God? - while all creatures in the heavens and on earth have, willingly or unwillingly, bowed (aslama) to His Will, and to Him shall they all be brought back.6 They say, “God has taken a son.” Exalted is He! Rather, to Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth. All are devoutly obedient (qānitūn) to Him.7 The seven heavens and the earth, and all beings therein, declare His glory: there is not a thing but celebrates His praise; And yet ye understand not how they declare His glory! Verily He is Oft-Forbear, Most Forgiving! 8

The default mode of the created realm is, then, as the above verses suggest, one of submission and obedience to its Creator and conscious glorification of His Godhood. Nursi offers us an insight into how such submission obtains by likening the cosmos to a vast palace, and the worship offered up by created beings to the construction and maintenance of that boundless edifice.

302

  On Worship and Righteous Action The All-Wise Quran states clearly that everything, from the heavens to the earth, from the stars to flies, from angels to fishes, and from planets to particles, praises, glorifies, prostrates before and worships Almighty God. But their worship varies according to their capacities and the Divine Names that they manifest; it is all different. We shall explain one of the varieties of their worship with a comparison. For example - And God’s is the highest similitude - when a mighty landowning lord builds a city or splendid palace, he employs four categories of workers. The first category consists of his slaves and bondsmen. They receive neither wage nor remuneration, but for each item of work that they carry out through their lord’s command, they experience a subtle pleasure and pleasant eagerness. Whatever they utter by way of praise and description of their lord increases their pleasure and eagerness. Knowing their connection with their lord to be a great honour, they content themselves with that. Also they find pleasure from looking to their work with the view of their lord, and for his sake and in his name. They are not in need of any wage, rank or remuneration. The second category consists of ordinary servants. They do not know why they are working or that they are being employed by the lord. He causes them to work through his own ideas and knowledge and gives them an appropriately small wage. These servants are unaware of what various and comprehensive aims and exalted matters result as a consequence of their work. Some of them even imagine that their work concerns themselves alone and has no aim besides their wage. As for the third category, the lord has some animals which he employs in various jobs in the construction of the city and palace. He only gives them fodder, but their working at tasks suitable for their abilities gives them pleasure. For, if a potentiality or ability is realized in action and work, there is a breathing in and expansion and this results in pleasure. The pleasure to be had from all activity stems from this. The wage and remuneration of this sort of servant, then, is only fodder and that pleasure. The fourth category is made up of workers who know what they are doing, and why and for whom they are working, and why the other workers are working, and what the purpose of the lord is, and why he is causing them to work. Workers of this category are therefore bosses and supervisors over the other workers. They receive remuneration that is graded according to their rank and degree.9

In Nursi’s allegory, the palace is the created realm and the landowning lord is, of course, the ‘Sustainer of All Worlds, the All-Glorious Lord of the heavens and the earth and the All-Beauteous Builder of this world and the world to come’. While He is the Creator of the palace that is the cosmos, four categories of beings are ‘employed’ in the continuous construction and maintenance of the ‘palace’. However, Nursi is quick to point out that their being employed by Him should not be construed as indicating any need on His part for ‘helpers’. As our appraisal of Nursi’s discourse on causality in Chapter Three has shown, the created realm is nothing but a series of veils that cover the ‘hand of God’, and if any created being is seen to act, it does so in appearance only: since man is a limited, timebound being immersed in a causal nexus, the ‘employment’ of beings by God in the dayto-day administration of the cosmos is not for God’s sake but for his. But not only is the functioning of created beings a veil for God’s might, sublimity and dominicality, it is also the means by which each of them “praises (h. amd), glorifies (tasbīh. ), prostrates (sajda) and

303

The Qur’an Revealed  worships(‘ibāda)” its Maker, even though their individual modes of worship (‘ibāda) are different. The four categories of beings alluded to in the palace allegory are angels, animals, plants and inanimate beings, and mankind. The first category is the angels, who are represented in the comparison by the slaves. For the angels there is no endeavour and progress; they all have their fixed station and determined rank, and receive a particular pleasure from the work itself and an emanation from their worship. That is to say, the reward of these servants is found within their duties. Just as man is nourished by air, water, light and food, and receives pleasure from them, so are the angels nourished by the varieties of remembrance, glorification, praise, worship, knowledge and love of God, and take pleasure in them. For since they are created out of light, light is sufficient for their sustenance. Furthermore, there is in the tasks that the angels perform at the command of the One Whom they worship, in the work they accomplish for His sake, in the service they discharge in His name, in the supervision they execute through His favour, in the honour they gain through their connection with Him, in the immaculateness they attain through studying His dominion in both its outer face and its face which looks to Him, and in the ease they find through beholding the manifestations of His beauty and glory, such sublime bliss that the human mind cannot comprehend it, and one who is not an angel cannot perceive it. One sort of the angels are worshippers, and the worship of another sort is in work. Of the angels of the earth, the sort that are workers have a kind of human occupation. If one may say so, one type are like shepherds and another like farmers. That is to say, the face of the earth is like a general farm and an appointed angel supervises all the species of animals within it through the command of the All-Glorious Creator, and with His permission, for His sake and through His power and strength. And for each species of animal there is a lesser angel who is appointed to act as a special shepherd. The face of the earth is also a place of cultivation; the plants are all sown in it. There is an angel charged with supervising them in the name of God Almighty and through His power, and there are angels who are lesser than him and who worship and glorify God by supervising particular species. The Archangel Michael (PBWH), who is one of the bearers of the throne of sustenance, is the most important overseer of these. The angels who are in the position of shepherd and farmer do not bear any resemblance to human beings, for their supervision is purely for the sake of Almighty God, and in His name and through His power and command. Their supervision of animals consists only of beholding the manifestations of dominicality in the species where they are employed; of studying the manifestations of power and mercy in it; of making known to that species the Divine commands by way of a sort of inspiration; and in some way of ordering the voluntary actions of the species. Their supervision of the plants in the field of the earth in particular consists of representing the plants’ glorification in the angelic tongue; proclaiming in the angelic tongue the salutations the plants offer to the All-Glorious Creator through their lives; and employing the faculties given to plants correctly and directing them towards certain aims and ordering them to some extent. These duties of the angels are meritorious actions of a sort by reason of the angels’ faculty of will. Indeed, they are a kind of worship and adoration. But the angels have no real power of disposal, for on everything is a stamp

304

  On Worship and Righteous Action peculiar to the Creator of all things. Another’s hand cannot interfere in creation. That is to say, this sort of work of the angels forms their worship. It is not a custom like with human beings. 10

Although Nursi’s angelology has been discussed at length in Chapter Four, the role of angels with regard to worship as outlined here warrants further attention. Nursi begins by pointing out that the creational ‘rank’ of angels is fixed: the fact that they have not received the ‘Trust’ and are thus not subject to Divine test means that for them there is no concept of progress or regress. They are in one respect the epitome of pure duty: they exist solely to serve God, from Whose submission they are unable to swerve; indeed, they possess neither the will nor the self-consciousness that would apprise them of the existence of any state resembling disobedience. While they are conscious, they are, unlike mature human beings, not conscious that they are conscious, and thus can never entertain the notion that they might exist in a modality other than that which has been conferred on them. That which they are conscious of, is, of course, God and His attributes. As the Quran points out, and as was discussed in Chapter Five, angels are ‘bearers’ of the Divine commands: each angel ‘carries’ or ‘manifests’ one or more of the Names of God, thus serving as a kind of interface or isthmus between the hidden realm (‘ālam al-ghayb) and the visible world (‘alam al-shahāda). Unlike man, who is a comprehensive mirror to all of the Divine Names, each angel represents only a limited reflection of the Divine, which is why they are described as being of fixed rank. Some, for example, are portrayed as being in a constant state of genuflection, while others are forever prostrated before Him in adoration of His Lordship. For these angels, who are presumably closer – ontologically speaking – to Him than others, their very existence is a form of worship, and apart from worship – that is, apart from receiving the impress of the Divine names – they have no other ‘work’ as such. Others, as mentioned, receive the impress of one or more Divine names and then ‘bear’ them, enabling them to become translated into external existence and providing other beings – man included – with a reflection or manifestation of God in the form of the realm of dominion (‘ālam al-mulk), or the created cosmos that we see around us. Nursi likens such angels to ‘shepherds’, each responsible for a specific ‘flock’ of created beings. Their task is to communicate to the beings in their ‘care’ the specific names and attributes which their creation represents, and also to represent the praise and glorification that these beings offer up by means of their very existence as loci of Divine manifestation, particularly in the case of the inanimate, whose apparent consciousness and purposefulness is down to the workings of the angels tasked with ‘bearing’ the names of which they are constituted. Thus angels are both embodiments of worship and enablers of it, and as such their existence is nothing but pure worship. The second category of workers in this palace of the universe comprises the animals. Since animals also have an appetitive soul and faculty of will, their work is not ‘purely for the sake of God’; to some extent, they take a share for their souls. Therefore, since the Glorious and Munificent Lord of All Dominion is all-generous, He bestows a wage on them during their work so that their souls receive a share. 11

The second group of workers in the ‘palace’ of the cosmos are the animals, whose inclusion among those beings who possess souls means that while they too are engaged in worship,

305

The Qur’an Revealed  it is not of the same kind as the worship offered by angels, which is entirely selfless and unselfconscious. Nursi describes how God employs the animals, and how they in turn offer up worship, by citing the example of the nightingale. The All-Wise Creator employs the famous nightingale, renowned for his love of the rose, for five aims. Firstly, it is the official employed to proclaim in the name of the animal species the intense relationship that exists between them and the plant species. Secondly, it is a dominical orator from among the animals, who are like guests of the All-Merciful One needy for sustenance, employed to acclaim the gifts sent by the AllGenerous Provider, and to announce their joy. Thirdly, its task is to announce to everyone the welcome offered to plants, which are sent for the assistance of his fellow animals. Fourthly, it is employed to proclaim, over the blessed heads and to the beautiful faces of plants, the intense need of the animal species for them, which reaches the degree of love and passion. Fifthly, it is responsible for presenting with acute yearning at the Court of Mercy of the All- Glorious, Beauteous and Munificent Lord of All Dominion a most graceful glorification inspired by the truly delicate face of the rose.12

The apparently unrequited love of the nightingale for the rose is a well-known trope in Sufi and mystical literature, and in this rather florid passage, Nursi employs an age-old theme to illustrate what he believes to be an eternal truth. The creation is, in one sense, an outpouring of love by the Creator for the created, and the created respond by acknowledging that love with selfless veneration and wholehearted worship. Through the duties that it carries out – duties which are, for the nightingale, their own reward – many dominical truths are revealed: the mutual relationship that exists between the animal and plant worlds; the joy that is felt by all animals upon receiving the gifts of sustenance provided for them in the form of plants, and the love that they feel as a result of their intense need for them; and the praises that all animals offer up to God for this sustenance through the tongue of mute eloquence. It matters little, Nursi says, whether the nightingale is fully aware of the meaning of its own function in the same way that angels are; what is important is that others understand, and take heed. The nightingale speaks in his own tongue, but we understand these meanings from his plaintive words. If he himself does not altogether know the meaning of his own song like the angels do, it does not impair our understanding. The saying, “One who listens understands better than the one who speaks” is well-known. Also, the nightingale does not show that he does not know these aims in detail, but this does not mean that they do not exist. At least he informs you of them like a clock informs you of the time. What difference does it make if he does not know? It does not prevent you from knowing. However, the nightingale’s small wage is the delight he experiences from gazing on the smiling, beautiful roses, and the pleasure he receives from conversing with them and pouring out his woes. That is to say, his sorrowful song is not a complaint arising from animal grief; it is thanks in return for the gifts of the Most Merciful. Compare the bee, the spider, the ant, creeping insects, the male animals that are the means of reproduction, and the nightingales of all small creatures, with the nightingale: the deeds of all of them have numerous aims. For them, too, a particular pleasure, like a small wage, has been

306

  On Worship and Righteous Action included in their duties. Through that pleasure they serve the important aims contained in dominical art.13

The functions it carries out are not unique to the nightingale, of course, and Nursi tells us that there is in most species a class similar to the nightingale that consists of an individual or individuals with the task of representing the most elevated feelings of that species through glorification, which is the zenith of their worship. In the insect world, for example, there are examples of such heralds in abundance. Through their humming poetry they make all animals with ears, from the largest to the smallest, hear their glorifications, and give them pleasure. Some of them are nocturnal. These poetrydeclaiming friends of all small animals are their sweet-voiced orators when all beings are plunged into the silence and tranquillity of the night. Each is the centre of a circle of silent recollection, an assembly in solitude, to which all the others listen, and, in a fashion, recollect and extol the All-Glorious Creator in their own hearts. Others are diurnal. By day, in spring and summer, they proclaim the mercy of the Most Merciful and Compassionate One to all animate beings from the pulpits of the trees with their ringing voices, subtle songs and poetic glorifications. It is as if, like the leader of a gathering for the recitation of God’s Names who induces the ecstasy of those participating, all the creatures listening start to praise the All-Glorious Creator each in its own special tongue and with a particular chant.14

The animal world is, then, akin to a large convention of various groups of devotees who, by day and by night, through the tasks they are given to perform and through the tongue of mute eloquence, glorify the One Who has bestowed on them the gift of existence and the opportunity to gaze upon His attributes of perfection. The existence of the animal realm is, therefore, like the existence of angels, tantamount to pure worship: it is the response of the created to the Creator, Whose gift, given with love, is responded to in the same manner. In short, the animals, who serve in the palace of the universe, conform with complete obedience to the creational commands and display perfectly in the name of Almighty God the aims included in their natures. The glorification and worship they perform by carrying out the duties related to their lives in this wonderful fashion through the power of God Almighty, are gifts and salutations which they present to the Court of the AllGlorious Creator, the Bestower of Life.15

The third category of workers in the ‘palace’ of the cosmos is made up of plants and inanimate objects. Since they have no faculty of will, Nursi tells us, they receive no wage: their work is ‘purely for the sake of God’, in His Name and on His account, and is carried out through His will, power and strength. However, they are not completely oblivious to the joys of existence, despite their lack of will and soul. For it may be perceived from their growth and development that they receive a sort of pleasure from their duties of pollination and producing seeds and fruits. But they experience no pain at all. Due to their will, animals experience pain as well as pleasure. Since will does not enter into the work of plants and inanimate beings, their work is more perfect than that of animals, who have will. Among those who possess will, the work of creatures like the bee which are enlightened by revelation and inspiration is more perfect than the work of those animals which rely on their faculty of will.

307

The Qur’an Revealed  All the species of plants in the field of the face of the earth pray and ask of the AllWise Creator through their tongues of disposition and potentiality: “O our Sustainer! Give us strength so that by raising the flag of our species in every part of the earth, we may proclaim the splendour of Your dominicality; and grant us prosperity so that we may worship You in every corner of the mosque of the earth; and bestow on us the power to spread and travel in order to exhibit through our particular tongue the embroideries of Your Most Beautiful Names and Your wonderful, antique arts.” The All-Wise Creator answers their silent prayer and bestows on the seeds of one species tiny wings made of hair: they fly away spreading everywhere. They cause the Divine Names to be read in the name of their species. He gives to some species beautiful flesh that is either necessary or pleasant for human beings; He causes man to serve them and plant them everywhere. To some He gives, covering a hard and indigestible stone, flesh that animals eat so that they disperse the seeds over a wide area. On some He bestows small claws that grip onto all who touch them; moving on to other places, they raise the flag of the species and exhibit the antique art of the All-Glorious Maker. And to some species, like to the bitter melon, He gives the force of a buckshot rifle so that, when the time is ripe, the small melons which are its fruits, fall and fire out their seeds like shot to a distance of several metres, and sow them. They work so that numerous tongues will glorify the All-Glorious Creator and recite His Beautiful Names. You may think of other examples in the same way. The All-Wise Creator, Who is All-Powerful and All-Knowing, has created everything beautifully and with perfect order. He has fitted them out beautifully, turned their faces towards beautiful aims, employed them in beautiful duties, caused them to utter beautiful glorifications and to worship beautifully. O man! If indeed you are a human being, do not confuse nature, chance, futility, and misguidance with these beautiful matters. Do not make them ugly. Do not act in an ugly fashion. Do not be ugly! 16

While Nursi groups plants along with inanimate beings, it is the former upon which he focuses, according their ‘work’ a higher status than that of the animals since it is carried out without any intervention of will. Even more impotent than their animal counterparts on account of their being rooted literally in one spot, plants are characterised by Nursi as examples of pure invocation – and, by extension, sincere worship. Lacking the means to access their own sustenance, plants submit themselves totally to the will of their Creator, Who, by enabling them to disseminate their seeds by various ingenuous means, allows them to glorify and worship Him by spreading across vast areas and communicating the Divine names they reflect to other beings, including animals and man. From the Nursian perspective, then, the existence of plants, animals and inanimate objects, together with the permeation of all cosmic phenomena by the supra-material beings known as angels, has as its overriding objective the glorification and worship of God. All created beings are subjugated to Him, consciously obedient to Him and, through the functions they perform and the purposes they fulfil, are in a state of constant submission and worship. The whole of the cosmos, then, may be seen through the prism of Nursi’s natural theology as a vast place of prostration, echoing the Prophetic narration which has it that “The earth has been made for me as a place of worship (masjid)” and the saying attributed to a member of the Prophet’s family which holds that “the whole of the

308

  On Worship and Righteous Action world is the place of prostration (masjid) where God is worshipped” (kull al-ard.   masjid Allah). The fourth category comprises human beings. Human beings, who are servants of a sort in the palace of the universe, resemble both angels and animals. They resemble angels in universality of worship, extensiveness of supervision, comprehensiveness of knowledge, and in being heralds of Divine dominicality. However, while man is more comprehensive in his worship, he differs from the angels in that he has an appetitive soul which is disposed towards evil, which means that, unlike them, he is subject to progress and decline. This is an issue of great importance. Also, since in his work man seeks pleasure for his soul and a share for himself, he resembles an animal. Since this is so, man receives two wages: the first is insignificant, animal, and immediate; the second, angelic, universal and postponed.17

Man, then, is created for worship but, unlike the rest of creation, is possessed not only of the unique faculty of spirit (rūh. ) which enables him in theory to rise above the angels but also of an ‘appetitive soul’ (nafs) which, if unchecked, is capable of dragging him to an existential status far below that of plants and animals. As the Quranic verse cited at the beginning of this chapter asserts, man was created in order to worship God. The difference between man and his angelic, animal and plant counterparts is that he has the freedom of will either to worship God willingly or to refuse to acknowledge his own servitude to the One Creator and choose instead another object of reverence. It is to Nursi’s approach to worship in the human sphere that we now turn.

Man and worship

Before we explore Nursi’s understanding of what it means for man to worship, we should make a brief excursus into the etymology of the main terms used in Arabic to denote ‘worship’. The Arabic word ‘ibāda – translated traditionally as ‘worship’ - is a verbal noun derived from the tri-consonantal root ‘a – b – d, the meanings of which include ‘to serve’, ‘to worship’, ‘to adore’, ‘to venerate’, ‘to obey’, ‘to devote oneself to’, ‘to submit’ and ‘to accept the impression of a thing’. Given this, apart from ‘worship’, ‘ibāda also carries meanings such as ‘piety’, ‘obedience’, ‘submissiveness’, ‘utmost humility’ and, most interestingly, ‘the impress of divine attributes and imbibing and reflecting them on one’s own person’.18 While ‘ibāda may carry the meaning of worship in the popular sense of the word namely as an act or a series of acts which embodies or expresses the sense of worshipfulness felt by the actor - it cannot, as our brief etymological analysis has shown, be reduced to this. For what may appear on the surface to be an ‘act of worship’ – prayer, for example, or fasting – may actually be utterly devoid of piety, obedience, submissiveness and humility. Put another way, it is possible for an ‘act of worship’ to be carried out without any real sense of worshipfulness at all. In this case, to the external observer it is still for all intents and purposes ‘an act of worship’; indeed, given that the intention of the heart is not a tangible thing, the observer must trust that the act is being carried out with sincerity. In reality, of course, this may not be the case. It is important, then, that a clear line of conceptual demarcation be drawn between the sense of worshipfulness which should underpin external acts such as canonical prayer, and those very acts themselves.

309

The Qur’an Revealed  This sense of worshipfulness which should in theory inform external expressions of worship is perhaps better expressed by the word ‘ubūdiyya. Derived from the same root as ‘ibāda - with which it is considered by some to be virtually synonymous - the term does not appear in the Quran; it is, however, a staple of the Nursian lexicon, and for good reason, not least because it is arguably more finely nuanced than ‘ibāda, describing as it does not only the state to which man must aspire, but also the state in which he has been created. This is not as paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, for the state in which man is created and the state to which he must aspire are conceptually very different, even though they are both described by the same term. As Nursi points out, man is not only created in a state of ‘ubūdiyya but continues to exist in this state until he dies, regardless of whether or not he believes in his Creator. To understand this better, we need to focus on those meanings derived from the root ‘a – b – d which highlight the innate impotence that is man’s creational lot by default. For man is, as Nursi points out, “weak, impotent and wanting by nature and creation, with innumerable needs and subject to innumerable pains.” 19 He comes into the world in a state of abject indigence and, when viewed with respect to his corporeality, stands more in need of succour and support than most, if not all, of his fellow creatures. When animals come into the world, they come complete in all points in accordance with their abilities as though having been perfected in another world; that is, they are sent. They learn all the conditions of their lives, their relationships with the universe, and the laws of life in either two hours or two days or two months, and become proficient in them. Animals like sparrows and bees acquire in twenty days the power to survive and proficiency in their actions that man only acquires in twenty years; that is, they are inspired with them. This means that the animals’ fundamental duty is not to be perfected through learning and progress by acquiring knowledge, nor to seek help and offer supplications through displaying their impotence, but in accordance with their abilities to work and act. Their duty is active worship. As for man, he needs to learn everything when he comes into the world; he is ignorant, and cannot even learn completely the conditions of life in twenty years. Indeed, he needs to go on learning till the end of his life. Also he is sent to the world in a most weak and impotent form, and can only rise to his feet in one or two years. Only in fifteen years can he distinguish between harm and benefit, and with the help of mankind’s experience attract things advantageous to him and avoid others that are harmful. This means that man’s innate duty is to be perfected through learning and to proclaim his worship of God and servitude to Him through supplication. That is to say, it is to know the answers of the questions: “Through whose compassion is my life so wisely administered in this way? Through whose generosity am I so kindly raised? Through whose graciousness am I so delicately nurtured and ministered to?” It is to beseech and supplicate the Provider of Needs through the tongue of impotence and poverty; it is to seek from Him. It is to fly to the high station of worship and servitude to God on the wings of impotence and poverty. 20

As we saw earlier, the worship of animals consists, Nursi says, in their carrying out the duties which are part and parcel of their creational lot; for them, to worship is to act as they have been commanded to act, in accordance with their dispositions and abilities.

310

  On Worship and Righteous Action Man, however, whom Nursi often describes as the choicest ‘fruit’ of God’s creation, is, for want of a better phrase, created as ‘part-animal, part-angel’. While on the level of corporeality he is characterised by utter poverty and dependence, there exists in him the ability to transcend his animal nature and, indeed, to rise above the level of the angels. He is able to do this because of his status as one who has been created in imago Dei, as potential vicegerent of God and conscious place of manifestation of all of the Divine Names. Man has two faces: one, concerning his ego, looks to the life of this world. The other, concerning worship and servitude to God, looks to eternal life. In respect to the first face he is a wretched creature whose capital consists only of the following: of will he has only a partial power of choice like a hair; of power, the weak ability to acquire; of life, a fast dying flame; of a life-span, a fleeting brief spell; and of being, a swiftly decaying small body. Together with this, he is one delicate, weak individual out of the innumerable individuals of the numberless varieties of beings dispersed through the levels of the universe. In respect of the second face and especially his impotence and poverty, which are turned towards worship, man has truly great breadth and vast importance. For the AllWise Creator has included in man’s nature an infinitely vast impotence and boundlessly huge poverty, so that he can be an extensive mirror containing the innumerable manifestations of an All-Powerful and Compassionate One Whose power is infinite, an All-Generous All-Rich One Whose wealth is boundless.21

It is here that the meaning of ‘ubūdiyya as ‘receiving the impress of the Divine attributes’ is brought into sharp focus. While man is on one level weak and ephemeral, he is at the same time endowed with an ability that no other creature possesses. For, as was discussed at length in Chapter Five, man has also been created as a comprehensive ‘summary’ of creation, an ‘index’ of the vast book of the cosmos: man is, in short, a mirror for all of the Divine names, small ‘samples’ of which have been placed in him so that he might become not only a place of manifestation of the Divine attributes but also a conscious and willing demonstrator of them. As we have seen in our discussion of Nursi’s approach to the human ‘I’, these ‘samples’ are placed in man’s being in order that he may, through a process of deliberation and investigation, arrive ultimately at the conclusion that they belong to Another. In other words, if, as he grows up and develops spiritually, he attributes the ‘names’ and ‘attributes’ he finds in himself to their true Owner – to the One Whose reflection they represent – then his ‘ubūdiyya will become conscious. He will acknowledge his own impotence and transience, and he will ‘hand over’ all of the attributes of perfection he finds reflected in his ‘self ’ in an act of submission that will qualify him for the title of ‘abd Allah or ‘bondsman’ of God. If, however, he fails to do this, and instead ascribes these attributes of perfection to himself, rejecting the worship of God, then because servitude is part of his creational makeup, he will of necessity become a slave to the whims of his own evil-commanding soul. Nursi concurs with the Quran wholeheartedly on its insistence that man, who is by virtue of his innate disposition created to worship, cannot serve two masters at the same time – particularly when the demands of those masters are in diametric opposition.

311

The Qur’an Revealed  Man’s needs spread through every part of the world, and his desires extend to eternity. Just as he wants a flower, so he wants the spring. Just as he desires a garden, so does he also desire everlasting Paradise. Just as he longs to see a friend, so does he long to see the All-Beauteous One of Glory. Just as in order to visit one he loves who lives somewhere else, he is in need for his beloved’s door to be opened to him, so too in order to visit the ninety-nine per cent of his friends who have travelled to the intermediate realm and so be saved from eternal separation, he needs to seek refuge at the court of an Absolutely Powerful One Who will close the door of this huge world and open the door of the hereafter, which is an exhibition of wonders, and remove this world and establish the hereafter in its place. Thus for man in this position the only True Object of Worship will be One in Whose hand are the reins of all things, with Whom are the treasuries of all things, Who sees all things, and is present everywhere, who is beyond space, exempt from impotence, free of fault and far above all defect; an All-Powerful One of Glory, an All- Compassionate One of Beauty, an All-Wise One of Perfection. O man, if you are the slave of Him alone, you will earn a place superior to all creatures. But if you hold back from this servitude to Him, you will become an abased slave to impotent creatures. If you rely on your ego and own power and, abandoning reliance on God and supplication, deviate into pride and boasting, then you will fall lower than an ant or bee in regard to goodness and creation, and become weaker than a spider or a fly. You will become heavier than a mountain in regard to evil and destruction, and more harmful than a pestilence.22

Man, Nursi avers, is a finite creature with infinite needs, and these needs can be met only if he attains the knowledge, love and worship of One Who is able to fulfil those endless needs perfectly. In acknowledging the fact that he is created in servitude, he becomes a willing bondsman (‘abd) of God and finds in Him the key to the ‘treasuries of all things’. Should he refuse to acknowledge his servitude to the One, however, man, who cannot help but worship, will have no option but to bow down in submission to the many. As Nursi shows in his discourse on the ‘human I’, in order to justify self-worship, man will have to accept what he imagines to be the self-worship of other creatures, and even submit himself to them, should occasion dictate, to keep alive the vital lie of his own imaginary godhood. The result is that he will inevitably have to accept as many gods as there are causes and creatures in creation, and in so doing will fall to the position of the ‘lowest of the low’ (asfal al-sāfilīn). The believer sacrifices his imaginary ownership over the attributes of perfection he finds reflected in himself and becomes a liberated bondsman of One Master; the unbeliever holds onto those same attributes of perfection, but in so doing sacrifices his freedom and becomes the slave of countless masters, each pulling him now this way and now that. Both believer, as bondsman, and unbeliever, as slave, are worshippers of God: the difference is that a bondsman is one who accepts his servitude and embraces worshipfulness willingly.23 As for the unbeliever, he may believe that he does not believe in God, and will undoubtedly refuse to countenance the possibility that he may also be worshipping Him, but that he is both believer in, and worshipper of God – albeit, from our perspective, indirectly – is clear, both from the teachings of Quran and the writings of Bediuzzaman.

312

  On Worship and Righteous Action If Nursi’s claim that one who refuses to bow down to a Single Master must of necessity bow down to many appears at first glance to be at odds with the notion of free choice, one may appraise it in the context of the various Quranic declarations which confirm that all beings – including self-professed unbelievers – are subservient to Him. A salient example is the following verse: To Him belongs every being that is in the heavens and on earth: all are devoutly obedient to Him.24

How does one reconcile the devout obedience to God of all beings with the fact that dozens of verses discuss the rebellion of Satan, as well as the many different individuals and communities who have rejected Divine revelation and refused to submit to Divine commands? The key would appear to lie in the distinction which exists between God’s ‘universal will’ (irāda kawniyya) and His ‘legislative will’ (irāda shar‘iyya). According to the notion of ‘universal will’, whatever occurs, occurs only by His Will. However, it is not necessary that what occurs is actually ‘liked’ by God If Allah had so willed, succeeding generations would not have fought among each other, after clear (Signs) had come to them, but they (chose) to wrangle, some believing and others rejecting. If Allah had so willed, they would not have fought each other; but Allah fulfilleth His plan.25

That succeeding generations chose to fight each other was clearly not conducive to Divine ‘pleasure’, yet that they were allowed to fight – as a result of their free choice – was the consequence of Divine Will. As far as God’s ‘legislative will’ is concerned, it is not necessary that this will should occur or, indeed, be obeyed. Indeed, as the Quran shows, it may not be heeded by man even if God ‘desires’ it: Allah doth wish to Turn to you, but the wish of those who follow their lusts is that ye should turn away (from Him),- far, far away.26

Bearing in mind the distinction between the two modalities of Divine will, one may conclude that the devout obedience of all beings to God, mentioned in verse 30:26 above, refers to the universal submission of the whole of creation – including mankind – to the Creator. In this verse there is a clear indication that all created beings are obedient to God’s universal or creational (kawniyya) will, whether they are conscious of it or not, voluntarily or involuntarily. The dominicality of God is such that all things in existence are encompassed by His power and cannot act for a second without the sanction of His universal will and decree. Believer and unbeliever alike, together with acts of obedience and disobedience, exist and occur by this universal, creational will of God. Thus an unbeliever is always obedient to God’s creational will, even when he disobeys Divine commands: while he may flout God’s legislative will by refusing to pray or fast, he is powerless to act against God’s universal will. Moreover, even though the unbeliever appears to disobey God by refusing to submit himself to God’s legislative will, he is still in one sense devoutly obedient to Him, simply by virtue of the fact that not only are the objects of worship he chooses in place of God patently false, they are also creations of God which, like the act of disbelief itself, falls under the Creator’s universal will. To paraphrase the Quran,

313

The Qur’an Revealed  man cannot serve more than one master because there is only One Master. As Nursi points out, if one holds back one’s servitude from God, one is forced to abase oneself by bowing down in submission to that which is other than God. And that which is other than God is nothing but the veils which cover the attributes of God. Thus in worshipping wealth or fame, beauty or ambition, sex or power, the unbeliever enslaves himself to gods which can ultimately never fulfil his desires, oblivious to the fact that even in his self-induced slavery, he is functioning in full accordance with God’s universal will. God allows disobedience on account of the fact that man is subject to Divine trial, even though He does not condone it. That God may ‘dislike’ something yet will its existence is not as paradoxical as it may seem, as we will see when we discuss Nursi’s discourse on free will and Divine determining in Chapter Thirteen. Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī explains the apparent paradox through his allegory of the baker. One who makes bread for a living, he says, desires that the people be hungry, otherwise he would not be able to sell his wares. However, he does not wish them to remain hungry, for if they did so, they would not buy from him and he would go out of business. In other words, he wills – or desires – that they be hungry, but is not pleased with their remaining hungry. Like all analogies, this is far from perfect, but it goes some way to shedding light on the apparent contradiction that exists in God’s willing something with which He is not ‘pleased’.

‘I love not those that set’

Given that worship is part of man’s creational make-up, and that even unbelief and disobedience do not lie outwith God’s universal will, the crux of the matter is that conscious worship – or, more correctly, conscious worshipfulness – depends on man’s choosing the object deemed by him to be most worthy of worship. This fundamental search for a solution to the perennial existential dilemma facing man finds eloquent expression in the Quran in the story of Abraham and his rejection of idolatry: Lo! Abraham said to his father Azar: “Takest thou idols for gods? For I see thee and thy people in manifest error.” So also did We show Abraham the power and the laws of the heavens and the earth, that he might (with understanding) have certitude. When the night covered him over, he saw a star: He said: “This is my Lord.” But when it set, he said: “I love not those that set.” When he saw the moon rising in splendour, he said: “This is my Lord.” But when the moon set, he said: “Unless my Lord guide me, I shall surely be among those who go astray.” When he saw the sun rising in splendour, he said: “This is my Lord; this is the greatest (of all).” But when the sun set, he said: “O my people! I am indeed free from your (guilt) of giving partners to Allah. For me, I have set my face, firmly and truly, towards Him Who created the heavens and the earth, and never shall I give partners to Allah.” 27

Nursi’s discourse on worship includes a meditation on the Abrahamaic quest for truth which provides us with further insight into his understanding of precisely what it is that separates the true Object of Worship from the false. It made me weep, the verse I love not those that set, which was uttered by Abraham (PBWH), and which announces the universe’s passing and death.

314

  On Worship and Righteous Action The eyes of my heart wept at it, pouring out bitter tear-drops. The verse causes others to weep, and it is as though it weeps itself. The following lines are my tear- drops: they are a sort of commentary of some words present within the Divine Word of God’s Wise One, the Prophet Muhammad. A beloved who is hidden through setting is not beautiful, for those doomed to decline cannot be truly beautiful. They are not to be loved with the heart, which is created for eternal love and is the mirror of the Eternally Besought One, and should not be loved with it. As for a desired one who is doomed to be lost on setting, such a one is worthy of neither the heart’s attachment nor the mind’s preoccupation. He may not be the object of desires. He is not worthy of being regretted with the sorrow and grief that follows. So why should the heart worship such a one and be bound to him? As for one who is sought but then lost in ephemerality, I do not want such a one. For I too am ephemeral, and do not want one who is thus. What should I do? A worshipped one who is buried in death - I shall not call him, nor shall not seek refuge with him. For I am infinitely needy and impotent. One who is impotent can find no cure for my boundless ills. He can spread no salve on my eternal wounds. How can one who cannot save himself from death be an object of worship? Indeed, reason, which is obsessed with externals, cries out despairingly at seeing the deaths of the things it worships in the universe, and the spirit, which seeks for an eternal beloved, utters the cry: I love not those that set. I do not want separation, I do not desire separation, I cannot abide separation... Meetings followed immediately by separation are not worth sorrow and grief; they are not worthy of being longed for. For just as the passing of pleasure is pain, imagining its passing is also pain. The works of all the metaphorical lovers, that is, the works of poetry on love, are all cries at the pain arising from imagining this passing. If you were to constrain the spirit of all the works of poetry, from each would flow these grievous cries. Thus, it is due to the pain and tribulations of those meetings stained with transience, those sorrowful, metaphorical loves, that my heart weeps and cries through the lament of, I love not those that set.28

In this rather elegiac passage, part of which is in Persian verse, Nursi highlights the existential angst that man faces when he tries to garner the infinite from the finite. The patriarch Abraham could not give credence to the graven images of his father’s community and, rejecting their claims to godhood, began to seek an object of worship truly worthy of the name. First, he gazed at the stars and, transfixed by their beauty, would have taken them as his object of reverence if only he had not seen them set. The same feelings of reverence engulfed him when he saw the full moon rise, to the extent that he declared it to be his Lord. But the moon also waned, shattering Abraham’s trust that he had found his true Beloved. Finally, as the sun rises, Abraham sees a celestial body more splendid than all others, and declares it to be the One he has been seeking. But the sun also sets, and as it does, Abraham realises that he cannot have as his object of worship something which is, like him, ephemeral and subject to decline. Man is limited, Nursi says, but desires the absolute: how, then, can he ever be satisfied with a beloved who is as limited as he? Man is finite, he writes, yet desires the infinite, and possesses a heart that can house the unbounded: how,

315

The Qur’an Revealed  then, can he ever be satisfied with an object of desire that is as finite as he? Endless needs can be fulfilled only by One Who is not subject to imperfection or decline; the desire for the infinite and the absolute can be met only by One Who is omnipresent and everlasting, by One who does not ‘set’. Given that the transient can never be satisfied with the transient, and that the worship of finite, ephemeral things can never bring anything but sorrow, how is man to overcome this existential angst and realise the state of true worshipfulness that will not only bring fulfilment but will also enable him to carry out the ‘Trust’ which has been bestowed upon him? The answer, Nursi suggests, is that man should internalise the fact that he is ephemeral; sever attachments to all that is as he is; and cleave instead to the One Who does not, and will never, ‘set’. If you want permanence in this transitory world, permanence comes from transience. Find transience with regard to your evil-commanding soul so that you may be enduring. Divest yourself of bad morals, the basis of the worship of this world. Be transitory! Sacrifice your goods and property in the way of the True Beloved. See the ends of beings, which point to non-existence, for the way leading to permanence in this world starts from transitoriness. The human mind, which plunges into causes, is bewildered at the upheavals of the passing of the world, and laments despairingly. While the conscience, which desires true existence, severs the connection with metaphorical beloveds and transient beings through crying like Abraham, I love not those that set, and it binds itself to the Truly Existent One, the Eternal Beloved. O my ignorant soul! Know that the world and its beings are certainly ephemeral, but you may find a way leading to permanence in each ephemeral thing, and may see two flashes, two mysteries, of the manifestations of the Undying Beloved’s Beauty. Yes, it is within the bounty that the bestowal is to be seen and the favour of the Most Merciful perceived. If you pass from bounty to bestowal, you will find the Bestower. Also, each work of the Eternally Besought One makes known the All- Glorious Maker’s Names like a missive. If you pass from the decoration to the meaning, you will find the One signified by way of His Names. Since you can find the kernel, the essence, of these ephemeral beings, obtain it. Then without pity you can throw away their meaningless shells and externals onto the flood of ephemerality.29

There is no need, Nursi says, for man to abandon the world completely: all he has to do is to see things from the perspective of the ‘Other-indicative’ (ma‘nā-i h. arf ī) rather than from the perspective of the ‘self-referential’ (ma‘nā-i ismī). This means not refusing to see the transient but, rather, seeing through the transient to the Permanent One of which it is but a reflection. For as he explains, to pin one’s hopes on externals is to invest in the fleeting, the ephemeral; it is to worship gods that ‘set’, and which cannot provide what man is truly seeking. Among beings there is no work which is not a most meaningful embodied word and which does not cause to be read numerous of the Glorious Maker’s Names. Since beings are words, words of power, read their meanings and place them in your heart. Fearlessly cast words without meaning onto the winds of transience. Do not concern yourself looking behind them, needlessly occupying yourself.

316

  On Worship and Righteous Action Since the chain of thought of the worldly mind, which worships externals and whose capital consists of ‘objective’ knowledge, leads to nothingness and non-existence, it cries out despairingly in its bewilderment and frustration. It seeks a true path leading to reality. Since the spirit has withdrawn from ‘those that set’ and the ephemeral, and the heart has given up its metaphorical beloveds, and the conscience too has turned its face from transitory beings, you too, my wretched soul, attract the assistance of I love not those that set, like Abraham, and be saved. For, in a mighty circle for the mentioning of the Divine Names, this world together with all its beings and their different tongues and various songs declares, There is no god but God ; together they testify to Divine unity. And binding the wound caused by I love not those that set, they point to an Undying Beloved in place of all the metaphorical beloveds, attachment to whom has been severed.30

The notion of ‘worship’ discussed thus far is one that we have seen mainly through human eyes as man decides what is worthy of his devotion and self-sacrifice. To appraise the comparative worthiness of various potential objects of worship, as in the example of Abraham, may appear to confer on us the luxury of choice, and indeed when viewed from the angle of human free-will, there is nothing to suggest that this choice is anything but real. Yet when considered from the perspective of the Divine – namely through the prism of revelation – the view alters somewhat. Indeed, worship may appear to be the result of a choice but, as we have seen, every being in creation is, by virtue of God’s creational will, destined to submit itself, voluntarily or involuntarily. To bring this section on the ubiquity of worship in general, and the meaning of human worship in particular, to a conclusion, it is necessary to complete the theological picture by viewing the ubiquity of creational submissiveness from a slightly different angle. From the perspective of the Divine, God is worshipped not because men choose to worship, but because His Divinity is such that there can be no other response than worship. In short, God’s being worshipped is a necessary concomitant of His Divinity. The absorption of each class of men in a mode of worship dictated by their innate dispositions; the species of worship engaged in by other animate beings, as well as inanimate beings, through the performance of their essential functions; the way in which all material and immaterial bounties and gifts in the cosmos become means inciting men to worship and thanks, to praise and gratitude; the fashion in which all the manifestations of the Unseen and epiphanies of the spirit, revelation and inspiration, unanimously proclaim the exclusive fitness of one God to receive worship — all of this, in most evidential fashion, proves the reality and dominance of a single and absolute Divinity. If the truth of such a Divinity exists, it can in no way accept partnership. For those who respond to Divinity — that is, the fitness to be worshipped— with thanks and worship, are the conscious and animate fruits on the highest branches of the tree of the cosmos. If others were able to gratify and place under their obligation those conscious beings in such fashion as to make them turn away from and forget their true object of worship —Who may, indeed, be swiftly forgotten, because of His invisibility— this would be in such utter contradiction to the essence of Divinity and its sacred purposes that it could in no way be allowed. It is for this reason that the Quran so repeatedly and with such vehemence refutes polytheism and threatens the polytheists with Hell-fire.31

317

The Qur’an Revealed  Once the absolute divinity of God is established, then, it becomes clear that He Himself is proof of His own fitness to be worshipped, and that objects of worship other than Him have no real, extra-mental existence. In highlighting this, Nursi drives home the important theological point that God is worshipped not because He is the most worthy object of worship but because, on account of His absolute divinity, there is nothing else in creation that can be worshipped.

Conscious worshipfulness

For Nursi, then, as for the Quran, man has no choice but to worship, and if he is to attain salvation, he must abandon the illusion that there is anything that can be worshipped in existence other than the One Who possesses absolute Divinity. Man is by default a worshipful creature, even in his disobedience. But if he chooses to reject the idea that infinite needs can be garnered from finite sources and orients himself towards the only real object of worship, how should this worship manifest itself? Of what, practically speaking, does worship consist? It would appear that for Nursi, worship has two main aspects. The first one is, in a sense, implicit and concerns deliberation, reflection and the nurturing of God-consciousness; the second is both internal and external, consisting of two modalities of invocation (du‘ā) – the active (fi‘lī) and the verbal (qawlī). As far as the first aspect is concerned, Nursi sums up the meaning of worship as man’s response to the reality of Divine dominicality: The meaning of worship is this, that the servant sees his own faults, impotence and poverty, and in the Divine Court prostrates in love and wonderment before dominical perfection, Divine mercy and the power of the Eternally Besought One. That is to say, just as the sovereignty of dominicality demands worship and obedience, so also does the holiness of dominicality require that the servant see his faults through seeking forgiveness, and through his glorifications and declaring “Glory be to God” proclaim that his Sustainer is pure and free of all defects, and exalted above and far from the false ideas of the people of misguidance, and hallowed and exempt from all the faults in the universe. Also, the perfect power of dominicality requires that through understanding his own weakness and the impotence of other creatures, the servant proclaim “God is Most Great” in admiration and wonder before the majesty of the works of the Eternally Besought One’s power, and, bowing in deep humility, seek refuge in Him and place his trust in Him.32

With regard to the second aspect, Nursi asserts that worship in the practical sense of the word is anchored in the act of invocation, of which there are two kinds. Our supplication is of two sorts: one is active (fi‘lī) and by disposition, and the other is verbal (qawlī) and with the heart. For example, having recourse to causes is an active prayer. To gather together causes is not in order to create the effect, but through the tongue of disposition to take up an acceptable position in order to seek the effect from Almighty God. To plough a field is to knock at the door of the treasury of mercy. Since this sort of active supplication is directed towards the Absolutely Generous One’s name and title, it is accepted in the great majority of cases. The second sort is to offer supplication with the tongue and the heart. It is to seek certain wishes which the hand cannot reach. The most important aspect, the most

318

  On Worship and Righteous Action beautiful aim, the sweetest fruit of this is this: “The one who offers the supplications knows that there is Someone Who hears the wishes of his heart, Whose hand can reach all things, Who can bring about each of his desires, Who takes pity on his impotence and answers his poverty.” 33

In order to act, to do anything at all, man must have recourse to the causes (asbāb) at his disposal – causes which, as we saw in Chapter Three, are posited by Nursi as being nothing more than a veil which covers the names and attributes of God. To have recourse to causes, then, is to call – metaphorically – on the Divine names through one’s actions. It makes no difference whether the person acting is a believer or unbeliever: since he is completely dependent on Divine power in order to be able to act, his recourse to material causes is, whether he realises it or not, a form of active supplication: to accomplish whatever he sets out to do, he is in need of the constant manifestation of God’s names, which are, after all, the very stuff of which the external world is a reflection. But as Nursi points out, the believer has recourse to causes not because he thinks that by marshalling them together he can bring into being an effect. As Nursi’s discourse on causality has shown, a cause is, after all, nothing but a precursor to the coming into being of what appears to be its effect, but which is in fact created directly by God. To make his act acceptable to God, Nursi argues, and to ensure that his ‘active supplication’ (du‘ā-i fi‘lī) is answered, all man has to do is to be constantly aware that when he acts, he acts not through his own power but through the power – and, indeed, through every other attribute – of God. For the believer’s acts – and, therefore, his worship – to be complete, Nursi says, ‘active supplication’ needs to be augmented by ‘verbal supplication’ (du‘ā-i qawlī). This involves ‘calling’ upon God both verbally and with the metaphorical tongue of the heart, and as Nursi points out, it provides man with a platform from which he can announce to God those desires of his which cannot be obtained through ‘active supplication’. It involves the admission, before God, that one is impotent, and that in order for one’s legitimate wishes to be fulfilled, one needs the grace, mercy and power of One who is above all need. From the Nursian perspective, ‘active supplication’ is nothing more than the open profession by man that all that he has, and all that he is or ever can be, is thanks to the manifestation of the Divine names, which are the focus of his invocation. While Nursi is right in stating that verbal supplication is used in situations where active supplication is either ineffectual or inappropriate, it should not be construed as some kind of ‘last resort’ that man has recourse to when his actions appear not to bear fruit. Verbal supplication is not a substitute for active supplication but a complement to it. By virtue of the fact that he is having recourse to the Divine names which underpin material causes, when a believer acts, he is, so long as he is God-aware, making an active supplication. However, even if his action is successful, conscious and open acknowledgment of the One who grants that success is prescribed. And the means through which this acknowledgment takes place is verbal supplication. It involves not only acting in a manner that indicates acknowledgement of the names of God, but also professing verbally the name or names of God that the action embodies. Traditionally, Muslims are encouraged to begin every action with the words ‘In the name of God’ (bismillāh) – a formulaic utterance which alludes to all of the names of God and serves to sacralise the action which it accompanies.

319

The Qur’an Revealed  For Nursi, for man to act ‘in the name of God’, and to acknowledge verbally that he is doing so, is to make all that he does sacred, however apparently mundane. Acting ‘in the name of God’ is the key to understanding ‘righteous action’ as Nursi sees it. For him, the point is not that man should perform ‘sacred acts’; the point is that man should make all acts sacred. And this applies as much to those rituals which are traditionally recognized as ‘acts of worship’, such as prayer and fasting, as it does to seemingly mundane activities such as cooking, shopping or sleeping. An act is only as righteous as one makes it, whether it be performing canonical prayer or driving a car to the supermarket. That one is obligatory and the other permissible but not mandatory makes no difference: Quranic man is instructed at all times to act ‘in the name of God’, and to acknowledge the Divine, in all situations and at all times.

Acting ‘in the name of God’

The importance of rendering acts sacred and the benefits of acting ‘in the name of God’ are outlined by Nursi in The First Word, a short treatise on bismillāh and its significance for man in his everyday life. Typically, Nursi begins his treatise with an allegory. Bismillah, “In the Name of God,” is the start of all things good. We too shall start with it. Know, O my soul! Just as this blessed phrase is a mark of Islam, so too it is constantly recited by all beings through their tongues of disposition. If you want to know what an inexhaustible strength, what an unending source of bounty, is Bismillah, listen to the following story which is in the form of a comparison. It goes like this: Someone who makes a journey through the deserts of Arabia has to travel in the name of a tribal chief and enter under his protection, for in this way he may be saved from the assaults of bandits and secure his needs. On his own he will perish in the face of innumerable enemies and needs. And so, two men went on such a journey and entered the desert. One of them was modest and humble, the other proud and conceited. The humble man assumed the name of a tribal chief, while the proud man did not. The first travelled safely wherever he went. If he encountered bandits, he said: “I am travelling in the name of such-and-such tribal leader,” and they did not molest him. If he came to some tents, he was treated respectfully on account of the name. But the proud man suffered indescribable calamities throughout his journey. He both trembled before everything and begged from everything. He was abased and became an object of scorn.34

The traveller, Nursi says, is the human soul, and the desert represents the world. The human soul is impotent, with countless needs and numberless enemies. If the human soul is to make its journey across the desert of this world in spiritual and emotional safety, it needs to travel in the name of the ruler of that desert in order to arrive safely at its destination. If, however, it chooses to travel under its own steam and refuses to acknowledge that every step it takes, it is beholden to the One through whose land it journeys, then on account of the innumerable hazards it will encounter, it will find itself beleaguered at every turn, “begging before the whole universe and trembling before every event.” 35 Yes, the phrase bismillāh is a treasury so blessed that your infinite impotence and poverty bind you to an infinite power and mercy; it makes your impotence and poverty a most

320

  On Worship and Righteous Action acceptable intercessor at the Court of One All-Powerful and Compassionate. The person who acts saying, “In the Name of God,” resembles someone who enrols in the army. He acts in the name of the government; he has fear of no one; he speaks, performs every matter, and withstands everything in the name of the law and the name of the government.36

Travelling ‘in the Name of God’ will not make man immune to suffering or calamity: man is, after all, subject to Divine trial (imtih.ān) and will, as the Quran affirms, always have his faith tested by various forms of affliction. What Nursi is saying here, it seems, is that to travel in the ‘name of God’ means to travel with complete trust in Divine guidance and without any fear of that which is ‘other than God’. To travel ‘in the Name of God’ is put one’s faith in Divine succour completely and to abandon all attachment to, or reliance upon, the impotent and the ephemeral. When man travels through the ‘desert of the world’ in the name of God, he is allying himself with the rest of the beings in the creation, each of which, Nursi tells us, utters the phrase Bismillah through the tongue of its innate disposition. All beings say “In the Name of God” through the tongue of disposition. If you ask, ‘How is that so?’, this is my answer. If you were to see that a single person had come and had driven all the inhabitants of a town to a place by force and compelled them to work, you would be certain that he had not acted in his own name and through his own power, but was a soldier, acting in the name of the government and relying on the power of the king. In the same way, all things act in the name of Almighty God, for minute things like seeds and grains bear huge trees on their heads; they raise loads like mountains. That means all trees say: “In the Name of God,” fill their hands from the treasury of mercy and offer them to us. All gardens say: “In the Name of God,” and become cauldrons from the kitchens of Divine power in which are cooked numerous varieties of different foods. All blessed animals like cows, camels, sheep and goats, say: “In the Name of God,” and produce springs of milk from the abundance of mercy, offering us a most delicate and pure food like the water of life in the name of the Provider. The roots and rootlets, soft as silk, of plants, trees and grasses say: “In the Name of God,” and pierce and pass through hard rock and earth. Mentioning the name of God, the name of the Most Merciful, everything becomes subjected to them. The roots spreading through hard rock and earth and producing fruits as easily as the branches spread through the air and produce fruits, and the delicate green leaves retaining their moisture for months in the face of extreme heat, deal a slap in the mouths of naturalists and jab a finger in their blind eyes, saying: “Even heat and hardness, in which you most trust, are under a command. For like the Staff of Moses, each of those silken rootlets conforms to the command of And We said, O Moses, strike the rock with your staff, and splits the rock. And the delicate leaves fine as cigarette paper recite the verse O fire be coolness and peace against the heat of the fire, each like the members of Abraham.37

That a single seed should be able to produce a huge tree is, Nursi asserts, a result of its acting ‘in the Name of God’ alone: were it not to utter Bismillah from the outset, this tiny, insignificant and seemingly impotent seed would not be able to germinate, grow and, eventually, ‘raise loads like mountains’. Everything becomes subjected to the seed on account of its overt

321

The Qur’an Revealed  profession of the phrase ‘in God’s Name’. What we can understand here is that, in one sense, the utterance of the phrase Bismillah by animals, plants and even inanimate objects, is their existence. After all, are created beings not manifestations of the Divine Names? While it is perfectly reasonable to believe that non-human creation may actually utter the words ‘in the Name of God’, a more readily acceptable explanation is that since beings are but instantiated permutations of Divine names, not only are they ‘utterances’ of the Divine – God’s Words made manifest – but they are also reflectors or mirrors of God’s Names, which they ‘utter’ and ‘call on’ by functioning as they were created to function. A seed which is destined to grow into an apple tree manifests many of the Divine attributes, but ‘Provider’ (razzāq) is perhaps one of the most easily recognisable. The seed is not only a locus (maz. har) of manifestation for Divine Provision, it is also a conscious and active exhibitor or displayer (muz. hir) of the act of Divine providing. The apple tree can thus be likened to the embodiment of the phrase ‘O Provider!’ (yā razzāq!), which it ‘utters’ by virtue of both its existential state and its creational function. Given that all things utter ‘In the Name of God’, Nursi says, humans too – who have the advantage over other beings of possessing self-awareness and freewill – should do the same. Since all things say: “In the Name of God,” and, bearing God’s bounties in God’s name, give them to us, we too should say: “In the Name of God.” We should give in the name of God and take in the name of God. And we should not take from heedless people who neglect to give in God’s name.38

All of man’s acts, Nursi says – our giving, our taking, and all of our other deeds – should be done ‘in the Name of God’. For the utterance of this phrase facilitates the accomplishment of three duties which, Nursi says, God requires of man in return for the bounties He bestows on him. These [three duties] are remembrance (dhikr), thanks (shukr) and reflection (fikr). Saying, “In the Name of God” at the start is remembrance and “All praise be to God” at the end is thanks. And perceiving and thinking of those bounties, which are priceless wonders of art, being miracles of power of the Unique and Eternally Besought One and gifts of His mercy, is reflection. However foolish it is to kiss the foot of a lowly man who conveys to you the precious gift of a king and not to recognize the gift’s owner, it is a thousand times more foolish to praise and love the apparent source of bounties and forget the True Bestower of Bounties.39

The key to sacralisation of deeds, then, is to remember God at the start of an action, to give thanks to Him at the end of the action, and to reflect upon the manifestation of His Names during that action. In the Nursian worldview, everything in creation is a bounty, and there can be nothing more bountiful than a deed that is performed for the sake of God. All deeds, therefore, so long as they are permissible, can be sacralised by adhering to the principle of dhikr, shukr and fikr. And naturally this holds true as much for seemingly mundane or ‘worldly’ acts, such as driving to the supermarket, as for traditional ‘acts of worship’ such as canonical prayer and fasting. Indeed, when everything is sacralised in this manner, all acts become ‘acts of worship’, whether they have been prescribed formally or not.

322

  On Worship and Righteous Action

Formal acts of worship

Even though we have established that Nursi’s emphasis is not on performing ‘sacred acts’ but on ‘making all acts sacred’, we cannot escape the fact that there are some acts which the Quran has prescribed and made obligatory for believers as formal expressions of submission. The rituals described traditionally as the ‘pillars of Islam’ incorporate some of these formal ‘acts of worship’ enjoined on man by the Quran: the witnessing that there is no god but God (shahāda); the canonical prayer (s.alāt); the annual fast (s.awm); the giving of alms (zakāt); and the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. It should be clear that if there is no sense of worshipfulness to permeate an act, there is no qualitative difference between an act that is obligatory and one that is merely permissible, and the abandonment of which has not been proscribed, such as our stock example of driving to the supermarket. When worshipfulness obtains, however, all acts – obligatory and permissible – become expressions of worship. Consequently, then, a non-obligatory act that is carried out in a spirit of worshipfulness must, according to this line of reasoning, be of greater merit than an obligatory act which is performed imitatively or in a state of unawareness. But if a believer acts worshipfully at all times and in all situations, does this make his non-obligatory actions as meritorious as his obligatory deeds? And if it does, why, one may ask, have those particular obligatory acts been made obligatory? This is not a question which Nursi himself poses explicitly, but it is one to which, inadvertently, he provides answers. While all legitimate acts – obligatory and non-obligatory – are, by virtue of the fact that they are created by God, veils for Divine wisdom, there are some acts the hidden wisdom of which is clearly so important for man that their performance has been made mandatory. This much is clear from the way Nursi sees the ‘pillars of Islam’ in the Risale-i Nur. Bediuzzaman was not a jurist and did not concern himself with detailed expositions of the rules and regulations covering the external practices of Islam. For him, as for Ghazālī and other theologian-mystics before him, what was important was to uncover the psychospiritual significance of rite and ritual and to understand the many layers of meaning beneath them. Nursi delves into the inner meaning of all of the ‘pillars of Islam’ throughout the Risale-i Nur, devoting the lion’s share of his attention to canonical prayer (s.alāt) and fasting (s.awm). It is to these formal ‘acts of worship’ and Nursi’s treatment of certain aspects of them that we now turn.

Canonical prayer (s.alāt)

So glorify God when you reach evening and when you rise in the morning; for all praise is His in the heavens and on earth, and towards the end of the day and when you have reached noon.40

A student of Nursi once asked him what wisdom there was in the specified times of the five daily, canonical prayers or s.alāt. Nursi’s response opens with a brief exposition of the meaning and aim of s.alāt. The meaning of the prayers is the offering of glorification, praise and thanks to Almighty God. That is to say, uttering Glory be to God (Subh.ānallāh) by word and action before

323

The Qur’an Revealed  God’s glory and sublimity, it is to hallow and worship Him. And declaring God is Most Great (Allāh akbar) through word and act before His sheer perfection, it is to exalt and magnify Him. And saying All praise be to God (Alh.amdulillāh) with the heart, tongue and body, it is to offer thanks before His utter beauty. That is to say, glorification, exaltation and praise are like the seeds of the prayers. That is why these three things are present in every part of the prayers, in all the actions and words. It is also why these blessed words are each repeated thirty-three times after the prayers, in order to strengthen and reiterate the prayers’ meaning. The meaning of the prayers is confirmed through these concise summaries.41

According to Nursi, the offering of glorification, praise and thanks – embodied as they are in the supererogatory supplications which believers are encouraged to recite following each performance of s.alāt - constitute both the outer form of the canonical prayer as well as its meaning or kernel. He then expounds at length on what he understands to be the wisdom in the five daily prayers being performed at specific times. Each of the times of prayer marks the start of an important revolution, and each is a mirror to Divine disposal of power and to the universal Divine bounties within that disposal. Thus more glorification and extolling of the All-Powerful One of Glory have been ordered at those times, and more praise and thanks for all the innumerable bounties accumulated between each of the times, which is the meaning of the prescribed prayers. 42 Just as man is an example in miniature of the greater world and the Fātih. a a shining sample of the Quran of Mighty Stature, so are the prescribed prayers a comprehensive, luminous index of all varieties of worship, and a sacred map pointing to all the shades of worship of all the classes of creatures.43

By now the reader will be used to Nursi’s overarching tendency to see the same patterns reproduced at all levels of creation, and so it will come as no surprise to hear him describe man as a microcosm of the cosmos as a whole, the opening chapter of the Quran as a summary of the Revelation in general, and the canonical prayer as a kind of compendium in which examples of all forms of worship are indicated. As for the specific times of day at which the five canonical prayers are to be offered, each of these, he says, symbolises a season of the year, an epoch in the history of the creation or, more importantly, a stage in the life of man or in the creation which has particular significance for his spiritual growth or awareness. The first is the fajr prayer, offered as the night ends and before the sun rises. This time until sunrise resembles and calls to mind the early spring, the moment of conception in the mother’s womb, and the first of the six days of the creation of the heavens and earth; it recalls the Divine acts present in them. Next comes the z. uhr prayer, performed just after midday. This resembles and points to midsummer and the prime of youth, and to the period of man’s creation in the lifetime of the world. It also calls to mind the manifestations of mercy and the abundant bounties they contain. Then there is the prayer of ‘as.r, performed in the afternoon. This symbolises autumn and the coming of old age. It brings to mind the time of the Final Prophet, known as the Era of Bliss, and recalls the Divine acts and favours of the All-Merciful One present in them.

324

  On Worship and Righteous Action The maghrib prayer is offered just after sunset. Through recalling the departure of many creatures at the end of autumn, and man’s death, and the destruction of the world at the commencement of the resurrection, this time puts in mind the manifestations of Divine glory and sublimity, and rouses man from his slumbers of heedlessness. The prayer of ‘ishā is performed after nightfall. As for this time, by calling to mind the world of darkness veiling all the objects of the daytime world with a black shroud, and winter hiding the face of the dead earth with its white cerement, and even the remaining works of departed men dying and passing beneath the veil of oblivion, and this world, the arena of examination, being shut up and closed down for ever, it proclaims the awesome and mighty disposals of the All-Glorious and Compelling Subduer.44

Then comes the darkness of night, says Nursi, which puts man in mind of winter and, by extension, of the grave and the ‘intermediate realm’ or barzakh. Night time reminds man how needy he is for Divine mercy, while the recommended ‘night prayer’ or tahajjud symbolises the light which, thanks to that mercy, may illumine the grave and the darkness of the intermediate realm. With the coming of the true dawn, Nursi continues, the ‘morning of the Resurrection’ is brought to mind: as night follows day, then, most certainly the day of resurrection will follow the night of the grave. A full day’s cycle of canonical prayer, from fajr through to ‘ishā, and on through the darkness of night to fajr again, is likened by Nursi to the whole lifetime of man, and even to the lifespan of the created realm itself, of which man is a microcosm. Each of the five specified times represents a particular stage or rite of passage – a ‘revolution’, as Nursi puts it - in the life of man and in the life of the cosmos. Through the times of the canonical prayers man is thus reminded of his true nature as a being who is born, who matures and ages, and whose eventual demise means that he is despatched to the darkness of the grave, only to be brought back to life with the dawn of a new but very different ‘day’. That is, just as each of these five times marks the start of an important revolution and recalls other great revolutions, so through the awesome daily disposals of the Eternally Besought One’s power, each calls to mind the miracles of Divine power and gifts of Divine mercy of both every year, and every age, and every epoch. That is to say, the prescribed prayers, which are an innate duty and the basis of worship and an incontestable debt, are most appropriate and fitting for these times.45

But if each of the specified prayer times is a marker which reminds the worshipper of the bounties he receives every second, every day, every year and in every age, what wisdom does it hold for man himself, whose needs, as Nursi tells us time and time again, are great, and whose impotence is a given? By nature man is extremely weak, yet everything touches him, and saddens and grieves him. Also he is utterly lacking in power, yet the calamities and enemies that afflict him are extremely numerous. Also he is extremely wanting, yet his needs are indeed many. Also he is lazy and incapable, yet life’s responsibilities are most burdensome. Also his humanity has connected him to the rest of the universe, yet the decline and disappearance of the things he loves and with which he is familiar continually pains him. Also his reason shows him exalted aims and lasting fruits, yet his hand is short, his life brief, his power slight and his patience little.

325

The Qur’an Revealed  It can be clearly understood from this how essential it is for a spirit in this state at the time of fajr in the early morning to have recourse to and present a petition to the Court of an All-Powerful One of Glory, an All-Compassionate All-Beauteous One through prayer and supplication, to seek success and help from Him, and what a necessary point of support it is so that he can face the things that will happen to him in the coming day and bear the duties that will be loaded on him.46

The fajr prayer, then, offers man the opportunity not only of giving thanks for his ‘rebirth’ into a new day but also of voicing his concerns with regard to the burdens and responsibilities that he may have to shoulder. The time of z. uhr, just past midday, is the time of the day’s zenith and the start of its decline, the time when daily labours approach their achievement, the time of a short rest from the pressures of work, when the spirit needs a pause from the heedlessness and insensibility caused by toil, and a time Divine bounties are manifested. Anyone may understand then how fine and agreeable, how necessary and appropriate it is for the human spirit to perform the midday prayer, which means to be released from the pressure, to shake off the heedlessness and to leave behind those meaningless, transient things and, clasping one’s hands at the Court of the True Bestower of Bounties, the Eternally Self-Subsistent One, to offer praise and thanks for all His gifts and seek help from Him, and, through bowing, to display one’s impotence before His glory and tremendousness, and to prostrate and proclaim one’s wonder, love and humility. One who does not understand this is not a true human being.47

As midday is approached, man is commanded to pause his labours in order to meditate upon the succour he has received, and continues to receive, as he goes about his duties. The z. uhr prayer is, like the other prayers, an enforced break in the daily routine and a means of reminding man, whose absorption in his work may detract from his God-awareness and lead to negligence, of the real meaning and aim of his existence. As for the time of ‘as.r in the afternoon, it calls to mind the melancholy season of autumn and the mournful state of old age and the sombre period at the end of time. It is also when the matters of the day reach their conclusion, and the time the Divine bounties which have been received that day like health, well-being and beneficial duties have accumulated to form a great total, and the time that proclaims through the sun’s beginning to sink in the sky that man is a guest-official and that everything is transient and inconstant. Now the human spirit desires eternity and was created for it; it worships benevolence and is pained by separation. Thus anyone who is truly a human being may understand what an exalted duty, what an appropriate service, what a fitting way to repay a debt of human nature, indeed, what an agreeable pleasure it is to perform the afternoon prayer. For by offering supplications at the Eternal Court of the Everlasting Pre-Eternal One, the Eternally Self-Subsistent One, it has the meaning of taking refuge in the grace of unending, infinite mercy, and by offering thanks and praise in the face of innumerable bounties, of humbly bowing before the mightiness of His dominicality, and by prostrating in utter humility before the everlastingness of His Godhead, of finding true consolation of heart and ease of spirit, and being girded ready for worship in the presence of His grandeur.48

326

  On Worship and Righteous Action The time of ‘as.r, the prayer performed as the sun begins its decline, is redolent for Nursi of the transience which characterises the human condition. The sun appears to be falling gradually towards the horizon, bringing to mind the meditation of Abraham, who, so bedazzled by the light of the rising sun that he deemed it worthy of worship, later confessed, as the sun began to sink in the sky, that “I love not those that set.” Interestingly enough, Prophetic Tradition places special emphasis on the significance of the ‘as.r prayer, not inconceivably for this very reason. The time of ‘as.r is the time when decline, demise, transience, ephemerality, inconsistence, contingence and weakness start to become tangible; for a believer to pray at this time is not only to acknowledge his powerlessness in the face of his own finitude but also to take refuge in the presence of One Whose mercy is infinite and Whose power is absolute. As the sun sets and the time of maghrib approaches, Nursi tells us, it calls to mind the disappearance of the bountiful worlds of summer and autumn and heralds the beginning of winter. And winter in turn brings into focus the approach of death, when man will be separated from all attachments and will enter the grave. The time of maghrib is thus a confirmation, if such were needed, that the intimations of transience and decline represented by the time of ‘as.r were indeed true and have now come to pass. As the sun sets, the apparent godhood of all that is other-than-God is proved once more to be false, thus issuing a warning “to those who worship transient, ephemeral beloveds.” 49 Those who heed this warning, Nursi avers, use the time of maghrib to abjure all of the ties which bind them to contingent beings and orient themselves instead to God alone. Thus, at such a time, for the maghrib prayer, man’s spirit, which by its nature is a mirror desirous for an Eternal Beauty, turns its face towards the throne of mightiness of the Eternal Undying One, the Enduring Everlasting One, Who performs these mighty works and turns and transforms these huge worlds, and, declaring God is Most Great over these transient beings, withdraws from them. Man clasps his hands in service of his Lord and rises in the presence of the Enduring Eternal One, and through saying All praise be to God he extols His faultless perfection, His peerless beauty, His infinite mercy. Through declaring: You alone do we worship and from You alone we seek help, he proclaims his worship for and seeks help from His unassisted dominicality, His unpartnered Godhead, His unshared sovereignty. Then he bows, and through declaring together with all the universe his weakness and impotence, his poverty and baseness before the infinite majesty, the limitless power and utter mightiness of the Enduring Eternal One, he says: All glory to My Mighty Sustainer and glorifies his Sublime Sustainer. And prostrating before the undying Beauty of His Essence, His unchanging sacred attributes, His constant everlasting perfection, through abandoning all things other than Him, man proclaims his love and worship in wonder and self-abasement. He finds an AllCompassionate Eternal One. And through saying All glory to my Exalted Sustainer, he declares his Most High Sustainer to be free of decline and exalted above any fault. To perform the maghrib prayer is this. So how can someone be considered a human being who does not understand what a fine and pure duty is the prayer at sunset, what an exalted and pleasurable act of service, what an agreeable and pleasing act of worship, what a serious matter, and what an unending conversation and permanent happiness it is in this transient guest-house? 50

327

The Qur’an Revealed  The final canonical prayer of the day, the ‘ishā prayer, is prayed when night has completely fallen and no traces of daylight remain. Unlike the obligatory prayers, which believers are encouraged to perform as soon as the time for them arrives, the ‘isha prayer is generally offered as late as possible, in accordance with Prophetic Tradition. Moreover, there is another h. adīth which deems it reprehensible (makrūh) to speak once the ‘ishā prayer has been performed. If these Traditions are authentic, it suggests that the practice at the time of Muhammad was for the last prayer of the day to be performed when it was as dark as possible and to be followed by silence – and, presumably, sleep. Why this should have been is not entirely clear, but it does not seem too fanciful to speculate that the notion of ‘ishā as somehow representing death and the entrance to the grave might have been a consideration even then; it certainly was for Nursi. At the time of ‘ishā at nightfall, the last traces of the day remaining on the horizon disappear and the world of night enfolds the universe. As the All-Powerful and Glorious One, the Changer of Night and Day turns the white page of day into the black page of night through the mighty disposals of His dominicality, it recalls the Divine activities of that All-Wise One of Perfection, the Subduer of the Sun and the Moon, turning the green page of summer into the cold white page of winter. And with the remaining works of the departed being erased from this world with the passing of time, it recalls the Divine acts of the Creator and Life and Death in their passage to another, quite different world. It is a time that calls to mind the disposals of the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth’s awesomeness and the manifestations of His beauty in the utter destruction of this narrow, fleeting and lowly world, the terrible death-agonies of its decease, and in the unfolding of the broad, eternal and majestic world of the hereafter. And the universe’s Owner, its True Disposer, its True Beloved and Object of Worship can only be the One Who with ease turns night into day, winter into spring, and this world into the hereafter like the pages of a book; Who writes and erases them, and changes them. Thus at nightfall, man’s spirit, which is infinitely impotent and weak, and infinitely poor and needy, and plunged into the infinite darkness of the future, and tossed around amid innumerable events, performs the ‘ishā prayer, and, like Abraham, man admits once more through his prayer that “I do not love those that set.” 51

At the time of ‘ishā, then, man stands metaphorically at the very gateway of death, performing his last duty of worship before he enters the grave of darkness, silence and sleep. He starts with the Fātiha, that is, instead of praising and being obliged to defective, wanting creatures who are not worthy, he extols and offers praise to The Sustainer of All the Worlds, Who is Absolutely Perfect and Utterly Self-Sufficient and Most Compassionate and All-Generous. Then he progresses to the address,You alone do we worship. That is, despite his smallness, insignificance and aloneness, through man’s connection with The Owner of the Day of Judgement, Who is the Sovereign of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, he attains to a rank whereat he is an indulged guest in the universe and an important official. Through declaring You alone do we worship and from You alone do we seek help, he presents to Him in the name of all creatures the worship and calls for assistance of the

328

  On Worship and Righteous Action mighty congregation and huge community of the universe. Then through saying Guide us to the Straight Path, he asks to be guided to the Straight Path, which leads to eternal happiness and is the luminous way. And now he thinks of the mightiness of the All-Glorious One, of Whom, like the sleeping plants and animals, the hidden suns and sober stars are all soldiers subjugated to His command, and lamps and servants in this guest-house of the world, and, uttering God is Most Great! he bows down. Then he thinks of the universal prostration of all creatures. That is when, at the command of “Be!,” and it is, all the varieties of creatures each year and each century - even the earth, and the universe - each like a well-ordered army or an obedient soldier, is discharged from its duty, that is, when each is sent to the World of the Unseen, through the prostration of its decease and death with complete orderliness, it declares God is Most Great! and bows down in prostration. Like they are raised to life, some in part and some the same, in the spring at an awakening and life-giving trumpetblast from the command of “Be!” and it is, and they rise up and are girded ready to serve their Lord, insignificant man too, following them, declares God is Most Great! in the presence of the All-Merciful One of Perfection, the All-Compassionate One of Beauty in wonderstruck love and eternity-tinged humility and dignified self-effacement, and bows down in prostration; that is to say, he makes a sort of Ascension. For sure you will have understood now how agreeable and fine and pleasant and elevated, how reasonable and appropriate a duty, service and act of worship, and what a serious matter it is to perform the ‘ishā prayer.52

The last words that one utters in the canonical prayer are “May peace be with you”, directed not only at one’s own self or at anyone else who may be listening, but to the countless supra-material entities which, according to the Quran, populate the unseen realm that is parallel to the visible world. With this final benediction, man takes leave of the day – and, metaphorically, the world - and, cognizant of the fact that no created being can help him, entrusts himself to Divine compassion. Thus, since each of these five times points to a mighty revolution, is a sign indicating the tremendous dominical activity, and a token of the universal Divine bounties, it is perfect wisdom that, since they are a debt and an obligation, the prescribed prayers should be specified at those times. 53

The annual fast (sawm) of Ramadan

In his discourse on the times of prayer, we have seen how, like Ghazālī and numerous other theologians and mystics before him, Nursi sets great store by enumerating what he believes are aspects of the wisdom which underpins rite and ritual in Islam, and in particular those formal ‘acts of worship’ which have been deemed obligatory. What he does with regard to s.alāt, he repeats with regard to s.awm, dedicating a whole treatise to various aspects of the wisdom which he believes is at the heart of the annual period of fasting in Ramadan. His exposition comes in the form of a number of points, each of which highlights a particular facet of the Ramadan fast and the various layers of meaning which it is deemed to encompass.

329

The Qur’an Revealed  There are many purposes and instances of wisdom in the fast of Ramadan which look to both God Almighty’s dominicality and to man’s social life, his personal life and the training of his instinctual soul, and to his gratitude for Divine bounties. One of the many instances of wisdom in fasting from the point of view of God Almighty’s dominicality is as follows: God Almighty created the face of the earth in the form of a table laden with bounties, and arranged on the table every sort of bounty in a form of From whence he does not expect,54 in this way stating the perfection of His dominicality and His mercifulness and compassionateness. Human beings are unable to discern clearly the reality of this situation while in the sphere of causes, under the veil of heedlessness, and they sometimes forget it. However, during the month of Ramadan the people of belief suddenly become like a well drawn-up army. As sunset approaches, they display a worshipful attitude as though, having been invited to the Pre-Eternal Monarch’s banquet, they are awaiting the command of “Fall to and help yourselves!” They are responding to that compassionate, illustrious and universal mercy with comprehensive, exalted and orderly worship. Do you think those who do not participate in such elevated worship and noble bounties are worthy to be called human beings? 55

Since man exists in the realm of causes and is given to forgetfulness, Nursi says, he is at times unable – or, if he lacks belief, unwilling – to see that the sustenance which reaches him, and which arrives continuously, is a miracle of Divine providence. Causes, which are a necessary veil over God’s attributes, tend to blind us to the fact that we are provided for in the most solicitous manner by One whose compassion manifests itself in ways that we often overlook, attributing things as we do out of habit to causes. By awaiting the moment of the breaking of the fast and dwelling consciously on the true source of one’s bounties, one is able, during the month of Ramadan, to break the cycle of habit, to see beyond the veil of causes and to glimpse something of the compassion and dominicality of the true Provider of Sustenance. One of the many instances of wisdom in the fast of the blessed month of Ramadan with respect to thankfulness for God Almighty’s bounties is as follows: As is stated in the First Word, a price is required for the foods a tray-bearer brings from a royal kitchen. But to give a tip to the tray-bearer, and to suppose those priceless bounties to be valueless and not to recognize the one who bestowed them, would be the greatest foolishness. God Almighty has spread innumerable sorts of bounties over the face of the earth for mankind, in return for which He wishes thanks, as the price of those bounties. The apparent causes and possessors of the bounties are like tray-bearers. We pay a certain price to them and are indebted to them, and even though they do not merit it, are overrespectful and grateful to them. Whereas the True Bestower of Bounties is infinitely more deserving of thanks than those causes, which are merely the means for the bounty. To thank Him, then, is to recognize that the bounties come directly from Him; it is to appreciate their worth and to perceive one’s own need for them. Fasting in Ramadan, then, is the key to a true, sincere, extensive and universal thankfulness. For at other times of the year, most of those who are not in difficult circumstances do not realize the value of many bounties since they do not experience real

330

  On Worship and Righteous Action hunger. Those whose stomachs are full, and especially if they are rich, do not understand the degree of bounty there is in a piece of dry bread. But when it is time to break the fast, the sense of taste testifies that the dry bread is a most valuable Divine bounty in the eyes of a believer. During Ramadan, everyone from the monarch to the destitute manifests a sort of gratitude through understanding the value of those bounties. Furthermore, since eating is prohibited during the day, they will say: “Those bounties do not belong to me. I am not free to eat them, for they are another’s property and gift. I await his command.” They will recognize the bounty to be bounty and so will be giving thanks. Thus fasting in this way is in many respects like a key to gratitude; gratitude being man’s fundamental duty.56

Nursi makes two points here. The first concerns the importance of recognising the actual bountifulness of bounties. Again, since man is deluded by the apparent efficacy of causes, it is easy for him to attribute sustenance to material agents, and nutrition to material causes. Behind the veil of causality, however, is the One Whose sustaining of the universe is constant and unfailing. Were He to withhold the manifestation of His names for a second, the world would crumple into nothingness. Ramadan is an opportunity for man to see through the causal veil and behold the true Sustainer, and to give thanks. Although Nursi does not point this out here, it is a given that it is not God who is need of thanks but man, for to thank is to acknowledge, and to acknowledge is the key to belief, itself the means of salvation. And one can give true and sincere thanks only if one actually appreciates the value of sustenance. Nursi’s second point complements his first. The value of Divine providing can be appreciated fully, he says, only when one experiences its absence, and the hunger felt in Ramadan is one way in which such appreciation may obtain. Furthermore, the hunger experienced by those who are relatively well-off can give them some insight into the lives led by others, and in particular by those who are less fortunate or who spend most of their lives in poverty and hunger. For human beings have been created differently with regard to their livelihoods. As a consequence of the difference, God Almighty invites the rich to assist the poor, so that through the hunger experienced in fasting, the rich can truly understand the pains and hunger which the poor suffer. If there were no fasting, there would be many selfindulgent rich unable to perceive just how grievous are hunger and poverty and how needy of compassion are those who suffer them. Compassion for one’s fellow men is an essential of true thankfulness. Whoever a person is, there will always be someone poorer than himself in some respect. He is enjoined to be compassionate towards that person. If he were not himself compelled to suffer hunger, he would be unable give the person - by means of compassion - the help and assistance which he is obliged to offer. And even if he were able, it would be deficient, for he would not have truly experienced the state of hunger himself.57

Here, Nursi builds on the theme of compassion and posits Ramadan as an opportunity for man to live as others live – particularly those who spend the whole year in need. Without suffering hunger himself, how can anyone be expected to feel what others are feeling and nurture in himself a sense of compassion and altruism?

331

The Qur’an Revealed  Another instance of wisdom in fasting in Ramadan concerns the training of the instinctual soul. The instinctual soul wants to be free and independent, and considers itself to be thus. According to the dictates of its nature, it even desires an imaginary dominicality and to act as it pleases. It does not want to admit that it is being sustained and trained through innumerable bounties. Especially if it possesses wealth and power in this world, and if heedlessness also encourages it, it will devour God’s bounties like a usurping, thieving animal. Thus in the month of Ramadan, the instinctual soul of everyone, from the richest to the poorest, may understand that it does not own itself, but is totally owned; that it is not free, but is a slave. It understands that if it receives no command, it is unable to do the simplest and easiest thing; it cannot even stretch out its hand towards water. Its imaginary dominicality is therefore shattered; it performs its worship and begins to offer thanks, its true duty.58

There is a Prophetic Tradition which has it that during Ramadan, the ‘demons are in chains’. This would appear to be an allusion to the fact that the hardships of Ramadan are a means of training the appetitive soul or nafs. All of the formal ‘acts of worship’ in Islam are designed as means by which the soul may be educated and tamed, but the Ramadan fast is of particular significance in this regard. The Ramadan fast demonstrates to the soul – which, if left unchecked, tends to declare itself the centre of the universe – that in reality it has no power, and that the sovereignty it appears to enjoy over its own actions is an illusion. For the human soul forgets itself through heedlessness. It cannot see the utter powerlessness, want and deficiency within itself and it does not wish to see them. And it does not think of just how weak it is, and how subject to transience and to disasters, nor of the fact that it consists merely of flesh and bones, which decline quickly and are dispersed. Simply, it assaults the world as though it possessed a body made of steel and imagined itself to be undying and eternal. It hurls itself onto the world with intense greed and voracity and passionate attachment and love. It is captivated by anything that gives its pleasure or that benefits it. Moreover, it forgets its Creator Who sustains it with perfect compassion, and it does not think of the results of its life and its life in the hereafter. Indeed, it wallows in dissipation and misconduct.59

Fasting in Ramadan, Nursi assures his reader, will awaken even the most negligent and obstinate of individuals to the reality of his soul’s impotence. Through hunger, he will understand his need for the One who nourishes; through fatigue, he will understand his need for the One Who sustains. In giving up those things which, if not understood properly, tend to fuel the self-aggrandizement of the soul, the fasting believer is able to chip away at the despotism of his own ‘I’ and make it aware of its true Owner. One of the many instances of wisdom in fasting in Ramadan concerns the revelation of the All-Wise Quran: Since the All-Wise Quran was revealed in the month of Ramadan, to shun the lower demands of the soul and trivialities and to resemble the angelic state by abstaining from food and drink in order to greet that heavenly address in the best manner, is to attain to a holy state. And to read and listen to the Quran as though it were just revealed, to listen to the Divine address in it as if it were being revealed that

332

  On Worship and Righteous Action very instant, to listen to that address as though hearing it from God’s Noble Messenger (PBWH), indeed, from the Angel Gabriel, or from the Pre-Eternal Speaker Himself, is to attain to that same holy state. To act in this way is to act as an interpreter and to cause others to listen to it and in some degree to demonstrate the wisdom in the Quran’s revelation. Indeed, it is as if the world of Islam becomes a mosque during the month of Ramadan. In every corner of that mighty mosque millions of those who know the whole Quran by heart cause the dwellers on the earth to hear the heavenly address. Some of the members of the vast congregation listen to the reciters with reverence, while others read it themselves. Each Ramadan displays the verse It was the month of Ramadan in which the Quran was bestowed from on high in luminous shining manner. It proves that Ramadan is the month of the Quran. 60

The revelation of the Quran to Muhammad began in the month of Ramadan, which is no doubt why the study and recitation of the Book during this month is deemed to be of particular merit. Ramadan is the month of the Quran, Nursi avers, and it is an opportunity for man to re-acquaint himself with it, reading it and listening to its recitation as though it is being revealed for the first time. The Nursian dictum ‘As time grows older, the Quran grows younger’ is of particular significance here, for it reinforces his assertion that the Quran is a book that each individual in each age must read as though it is being revealed directly to him, addressing his particular concerns in a language that is consonant with the socio-cultural context of which he is part. To read the Quran during Ramadan is not only to commune with the Author of the text but also to communicate the Author’s message to the rest of the world, in exactly the same way that Muhammad communed with God and communicated God’s words to his community during the same month some fourteen centuries previously. Ramadan is therefore not only a month of fasting but a month in which the word of God is rediscovered, read anew and passed on to others. Another of the many instances of wisdom in the Ramadan fast, Nursi writes, is the opportunity that it gives for man to use the time wisely and hopefully make huge spiritual gains as a result. For the reward for actions in the month of Ramadan is a thousand times more than in other months. According to a Tradition, each word of the All-Wise Quran has ten merits; each is counted as ten merits and will yield ten fruits in Paradise. While during Ramadan, each word bears not ten fruits but a thousand, and verses such as the Ayat al-Kursi thousands for each word, and on Fridays in Ramadan it is even more. And on the ‘Night of Power’, each word is counted as thirty thousand merits. Indeed, the All-Wise Quran, each of whose words yields thirty thousand eternal fruits, is like a luminous Tree of Tuba that gains for believers in Ramadan millions of those eternal fruits. So, come and look at this sacred, eternal profitable trade, then consider it and understand the infinite loss of those who do not appreciate the value of those words. To put it simply, the month of Ramadan is an extremely fertile piece of land for the crops of the hereafter. For the growth and flourishing of actions it is like April showers in the spring. It is like a brilliant holy festival for the parade of mankind’s worship in the face of the sovereignty of Divine dominicality. Since it is thus, mankind has been charged with fasting in order not to heedlessly indulge the animal needs of the instinctual soul

333

The Qur’an Revealed  like eating and drinking, nor to indulge the appetites lustfully and in trivialities. For by temporarily rising above animality and refusing to answer the calls of this world, man approaches the angelic state and enters upon the trade of the hereafter. And by fasting he approaches the state of the hereafter and that of a spirit appearing in bodily form. It is as if man then becomes a sort of mirror reflecting the Eternally Besought One. Indeed, the month of Ramadan comprises and gains a permanent and eternal life in this fleeting world and brief transient life. Certainly, a single Ramadan can produce fruits equal to that of a lifetime of eighty years. The fact that, according to the Quran, the ‘Night of Power’ is more auspicious than a thousand months is a decisive proof of this. For example, a monarch may declare certain days to be festivals during his reign, or perhaps once a year, either on his accession to the throne or on some other days which reflect a glittering manifestation of his sovereignty. On those days, he favours his subjects, not within the general sphere of the law, but with his special bounties and favours, with his presence without veil and his wondrous activities. And he favours with his especial regard and attention those of his nation who are completely loyal and worthy. In the same way, the All-Glorious Monarch of the cosmos, Who is the Sovereign of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, revealed in Ramadan the illustrious decree of the All-Wise Quran, which looks to each of the numberless realms in the cosmos. It is a requirement of wisdom, then, that Ramadan should be like a special Divine festival, a dominical display and a spiritual gathering. Since Ramadan is such a festival, God has commanded man to fast in order to disengage him to a degree from base and animal activities. The most excellent fast is to make the human senses and organs, like the eyes, ears, heart and thoughts, fast together with the stomach. That is, one should withdraw them from all unlawful things and from trivia, and to urge each of them to its particular worship. For example, one should ban the tongue from lying, back-biting and obscene language and make it fast. And one should busy it with activities like reciting the Quran, praying, glorifying God’s Names, asking for God’s blessings on the Prophet Muhammad (PBWH), and seeking forgiveness for sins. One should prevent the eyes from looking at members of the opposite sex outside the stipulated degrees of kinship, and the ears from listening to harmful things; and to use the eyes to take lessons and the ears to listen to the truth and to the Quran is to make other organs fast too. As a matter of fact, since the stomach is the largest factory, if it has an enforced holiday from work through fasting, the other small workshops will be made to follow it easily.61

The Ramadan fast is not just about depriving the stomach of food. It is, as Nursi points out repeatedly, about training the whole of one’s being to act in accordance with the pattern upon which one has been created. One is not doing anything ‘extra’ by fasting; one is simply acting how one was created to act. In not eating and drinking until God gives the order, and in not using one’s organs and members to commit acts which are reprehensible, man is not doing anything over and above that which is, in any case, part of his innate duty as a human being and a believer. In fact, one is actually not doing anything at all, which is why fasting has often been described as the expression of worship most beloved of God. The Prophetic Tradition which has it that “You should fast, for it has no likeness” lends weight to the idea that fasting has been accorded a special status among the formal ‘acts of worship’ in Muslim devotional life. Fasting is, from one perspective, a ‘negative’ act

334

  On Worship and Righteous Action of worship – ‘negative’ in the sense that the fast – unlike canonical prayer, almsgiving or pilgrimage - consists of not doing, rather than doing. It may be instructive here to invoke Ibn al-‘Arabī, who with his own esoteric interpretation of the fast reaches the same conclusion as Nursi, namely that if man approaches Ramadan as it should be approached, he has the potential to become a “sort of mirror reflecting the Eternally Besought One (al-S. amad).” 62 Those who know that fasting is a negative description – since it is the abandonment of things that break the fast – will know for certain that it has no likeness, since it has no entity that is qualified by the wujūd (existence) that is rationally understood. That is why God says, ‘Fasting is Mine.’ In reality, it is neither an act of worship nor a deed. When the name deed is ascribed to it, this is done metaphorically (tajawwuz), like ascription, understood by us as a metaphor, of the word existent to the Real. After all, since His wujūd is identical with His Essence, attributing wujūd to Him is not similar to attributing wujūd to us, for Nothing is as His likeness.63

Since fasting is abandonment, and abandonment is inaction, and thus lacks external existence, it has no likeness; and since it is resembles no other ‘act of worship’, it is in a sense the ‘deed’ most beloved of God, Who Himself has no likeness. By worshipping in this most ‘negative’ of ways, in abandoning action and becoming totally passive, man allows the Divine to be reflected more clearly in the ‘mirror’ of his being. Another of the many instances of wisdom in Ramadan concerns man’s personal life. For the fast of Ramadan is a healing physical and spiritual diet of the most important kind. When man’s instinctual soul eats and drinks just as it pleases, it is both harmful for man’s physical life from the medical point of view, and when it hurls itself on everything it encounters without considering whether it is licit or illicit, it quite simply poisons his spiritual life. Further, it is difficult for such a soul to obey the heart and the spirit. It wilfully takes the reins into its own hands, and then man cannot ride it; it, rather, rides man. But by means of fasting in Ramadan, it becomes accustomed to a sort of diet. It tries to discipline itself and learns to listen to commands. Furthermore, it will not be attracting illness to that miserable, weak stomach by cramming it with food before the previous consignment has been digested. And by abandoning even licit actions as it is commanded, it will acquire the ability to listen to the commands of the Shari‘a and reason, thus avoiding illicit actions. It will try not to destroy his spiritual life. Moreover, the great majority of mankind frequently suffer from hunger. Man, therefore, needs hunger and discipline, which are training for patience and endurance. Fasting in Ramadan is patient endurance of a period of hunger that continues for fifteen hours, or for twenty-four if the pre-dawn meal is not eaten, and it is a discipline and a training. That is to say, fasting is also a cure for impatience and lack of endurance, which double man’s afflictions. Furthermore, the factory of the stomach has many workers. And many of the human organs are connected to it. If the instinctual soul does not have a rest from activity during the day for a month, it makes the factory’s workers and those organs forget their particular duties. It makes them busy with itself so that they remain under its tyranny. Also, it confuses the rest of the organs in the human body with the clangour and steam of the factory’s machinery. It continuously attracts their attention to itself, making them

335

The Qur’an Revealed  temporarily forget their exalted duties. It is because of this that for centuries those closest to God have accustomed themselves to discipline and to eating and drinking little in order to be perfected. However, through fasting in Ramadan the factory’s workers understand that they were not created for the factory only. While the rest of the organs, instead of delighting in the lowly amusements of the factory, take pleasure in angelic and spiritual amusements, and fix their gazes on them. It is for this reason that in Ramadan the believers experience enlightenment, fruitfulness and spiritual joys which differ according to their degrees. Their subtle faculties, such as the heart, spirit and intellect, make great progress and advancement in that blessed month by means of fasting. They laugh with innocent joy even as the stomach weeps.64

Arguably the most significant point Nursi makes here is that one’s bodily members and functions are not one’s own, and one must bear in mind that they have rights over us, just as other people have rights over us. They have duties of worship too, and they are often forced into distraction by our continuous, overweening demands on them. While man is a being composed of numerous members, organs and faculties, none of them is created by him or can be said in any real sense of the word to belong to him. Again, the habit of being a human being, enmeshed in a causal world and created as a mirror in which numerous attributes of perfection are reflected, tends to make man forget that in reality, he is, and has, nothing apart from what has been ‘loaned’ to him. While for homo economicus the body may be one’s own edifice to do with as one wills, for homo Islamicus the body is, like the rest of the cosmos, a locus of manifestation (maz. har) for the Divine attributes and also an active and conscious exhibitor (muz. hir) of God’s names: since its creation is the work of another, man cannot treat it as his personal fiefdom. The notion that one owns one’s own body and therefore can do with it as one likes is alien to the Quranic view of man: as recipient of the ‘Trust’, not only did man take on the responsibility of reflecting the names of God, but he also accepted on loan the ‘mirror’ – his material creation, including his own soul – in which those names are reflected. The Ramadan fast gives man the opportunity to reflect on the use to which he puts his body and the organs that comprise it, all of which have their own particular functions and needs, and all of which have been commanded to perform acts of worship appropriate to their particular situations. Ramadan provides man with the mental space to consider the rights that his bodily organs and members have over him, and the responsibility he has, as their temporary caretaker, to see that these rights are not abused.

Conclusion

It is clear from Nursi’s discourse on ‘ibāda that worship for him does not mean carrying out acts which are sacred; rather, it means fostering in oneself a sense of worshipfulness through which all acts – including those which are known traditionally as ‘acts of worship’ – may be made sacred. Righteous action, then, consists in being ‘God-aware’ and acting ‘in the name of God’ at all times, regardless of whether one is engaged in obligatory rites or the superficially mundane rituals of everyday life.

336

Chapter Eleven Spirituality Introduction

If, by spirituality, one means the sense of direct communion with God, the Muslim tradition includes a whole world of meaning beyond the formal profession of belief in God and external submission to God’s laws: even a cursory study of the Quran will reveal that it addresses, first and foremost, the question of man’s relationship with his Creator, and how the human soul and spirit must respond to the questions that such a relationship poses. The creation of human beings took place not merely so that they should affirm the existence of a Creator and bow down to His laws through various rites and rituals: God is not merely a principle that is to be accepted, or a giver of laws who is to be obeyed. While the God of the Quran is infinite, absolute, theoretically unfathomable and ultimately unreachable in the very real sense of those terms, He can be understood through His creation and, more importantly, His reality can be gradually ‘uncovered’ by man, who is able to approach God and become ever more aware of what He is simply by virtue of the fact that he is created in imago Dei, or in the image of God. In Nursi’s cosmology, man is the reflection whose purpose in life is to perceive and understand the Reflected. For him, therefore, spirituality is not about becoming more Godlike. In fact it is the very reverse. It is about realising that those attributes in man which appear to make him like a god belong in reality to another. The journey of man towards God, then, is not about becoming more like Him. It is about man’s ‘purifying’ himself of all possible claims to ‘Godlikeness’ and making room for God to reveal Himself through man. It means not acting like Him, but acting in His name; it involves not being like Him, but manifesting or revealing Him. For that to happen, one has to clear out the ‘clutter of the self ’ – the imaginary ownership one exercises over one’s own attributes – so that His ‘image’ may be reflected in the mirror of the soul. In the Quranic worldview, God is the Ground of all being, the One who created man to be His ‘vicegerent’ or representative on earth, in order that man should know, love and worship Him. And in order to know God, man must first solve the mystery of his own existence. For, according to the Prophetic Tradition:

337

The Qur’an Revealed  Whoever knows his own self, knows his Lord.1

The chief objective of man’s life on earth, according to the Quran, is to ‘journey’ towards the knowledge, love and worship of God through a continuous process of affirmation and submission, as outlined in the previous chapter. The objective of the journey towards God is to move ever onwards towards communion with Him as the Ground of all being, in Whom all beings are reflected, and Whom all beings reflect. In order to do that, man must strive for something described as ‘God-awareness’. It entails reading and interpreting the myriad ‘signs’ which exist in his own self, and in the cosmos around him, and which indicate the countless names and attributes of God, so that knowledge, love and worship of God may be nurtured. God is infinite and absolute, and so the truths concerning Him to which these ‘signs’ point are literally without number: an endless objective entails a potentially endless quest, one in which man must journey onwards without ceasing, rather than risk moving backwards and away from the ultimate destination. The quest to ‘know’ God has at its heart the quest to ‘know’ oneself, for as we shall see shortly, at the heart of Muslim spirituality lies the principle of ‘purification of the soul’. While this may connote notions of harsh personal penances, privations and mortification, it involves nothing of the sort, although it has to be said that the ‘spiritual journey’ to God as envisaged by the Muslim tradition is not an easy one; nor is it something that all believing Muslims are able to embrace fully. Nevertheless, it is open to anyone who wishes to transcend the purely material aspect of his or her creation and discover in reality who he or she really is. The idea of ‘purification of the soul’ which lies at the heart of Muslim spirituality – and, by extension, the Nursian approach to man’s spiritual journey - entails the gradual surrender of all human claims to sovereignty and the concomitant realisation that it is God and not man who is the real centre of the human universe. It involves comprehending the fact that all that man appears to be, have and own comes from an Other; and that all of the attributes of perfection – knowledge, beauty, wisdom, power and so on – that man believes make up the human self belong in reality to Him, and must be ‘surrendered’ while man is here on earth. To invoke the Biblical phrase, the journey involves the gradual realisation that the ‘kingdom of God’ is within man, and that to know who He is, it is necessary to know who and what man is. More precisely, it is by knowing what man is not that man comes to know what God is.

Sufism

It is believed quite widely, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that if one wishes to locate the ‘spiritual side’ of Islam, it is in Sufism that it will be found. This is, of course, a gross over-simplification, for not only does it fail to take into account the polysemous nature of the word ‘spiritual’ and the definitional vagueness of the word ‘Sufism’, but it also overlooks the fact that there have been many figures in the Muslim world whose overriding objective has been constant communion with God, but who have never openly self-identified as Sufis. Nursi himself is a prime example. Nursi’s own approach to Sufism is an interesting one, and not entirely unambiguous. However, before we explore his appraisal of the phenomenon, we need to unravel some of its

338

  Spirituality threads ourselves. Sufism, like Islam, is notoriously difficult to pin down. However, we have no option but to attempt to do so if we are to have any hope at all of understanding Nursi’s approach to what is arguably one of the most pervasive channels through which the realities of Muslim spirituality have been communicated. Sufism is sometimes translated as ‘Islamic mysticism’, but again, this description is rather vague. The word ‘mysticism’ is highly problematic: few words in the English language are used as loosely or as meaninglessly. Sometimes it is used as an equivalent for the inner truths which lie beneath the surface of religion, or the ‘esoteric’ – another term that is misunderstood and, as a consequence, much derided. Sometimes, mysticism is used to describe the occult or the quasi-magical quackery of New Age philosophy or new religious movements. And sometimes, ‘mysticism’ is used to describe the ‘sense of the mysterious’ felt by those who claim some kind of ‘spirituality’ but who are unable to identify it as pertaining to any religion in particular. Sufism has little, if anything, to do with these. Almost as perplexing as its definition is its origin. No-one really knows where it came from, or how it came about. Some claim that Sufism was a natural development of the introspective, pre-Islamic monotheism of desert hermits in Arabia who were known collective as h. anīfs;2 others believe that it postdates Islam, arising as a response to the rather legalistic religion of the orthodox jurists and more exoterically-minded scholars. And claims are made – by certain Western scholars in particular - that Sufism is simply the Islamic strand of sophia perennis – the eternal wisdom which is believed to undergird all religions. If one looks at how its own proponents describe it, early Sufism, arising in the eighth and ninth centuries, may be described as a natural ‘interiorisation’ of Islam. Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. 910) described Sufism as ‘being with God, without any attachments.’ 3 Ruwaym b. Ah.  mad (d. 914) said that Sufism ‘consists of abandoning oneself to God in accordance with His will’, while Samnūn (d. circa 910) said that it is about ‘not possessing anything, nor letting anything possess you.’ 4 And Abū Muh.  ammad al-Jarīrī (d. 923) said that Sufism means ‘attaining every quality that is exalted and leaving behind every quality that is despicable’.5 From these descriptions we can see that Sufism was understood as an attempt to commune with God directly, and to pursue the spirit, rather than just the letter, of the law. The early Sufi should be seen as one who recognised that true knowledge is knowledge or gnosis of God, which in turn can be reached only through the acquisition of self-knowledge: the realisation of what man is not, in order to attain knowledge of what God is. In this sense, the emphasis for the Sufi was on belief (īmān) and internal submission (taslīmiyya) rather than on the external religion of Islam. As such, it was in the early Sufi that Quranic spirituality found its particular embodiment and expression. ‘External religion’ – the performance of rite and ritual – was not eschewed, however. In fact, one of the most salient features of early Sufi teaching was its emphasis on the importance of ritual practice and adherence to the sharī‘a, the channel through which the external expression of Islam is made manifest. Early Sufism, then, preserved the harmony that is supposed to exist between the internal and external aspects of the faith. The designation ‘early Sufism’ is an important one, for with the passing of time the phenomenon underwent many changes: from being a term used simply to describe an individual’s sincere and private spiritual quest, and the techniques employed to facilitate

339

The Qur’an Revealed  the journey, Sufism became a blanket expression which came to cover many different forms of organised ‘ways’ and ‘paths’ to the truth. The gradual institutionalisation of Sufism took place in three distinct stages: from the stage of the individual’s personal submission to God, through the stage of communal surrender to the dictates of an ‘order’ or t. arīqa, and finally to the stage of surrender to a person – a sheikh or murshid – in what is known as the t. ā‘ifa stage.6 The word t. arīqa, literally meaning ‘way’ or ‘path’, symbolises the spiritual journey towards God, and is used to describe the grouping of a number of disciples (murīds) around a leader or shaykh, to whom they pledge allegiance as their spiritual guide. The shaykh is generally considered to be the spiritual heir of the founder of the way or order, who in turn is believed to have inherited his authority from other saints, sages and mystics before him, in a line or ‘chain’ (silsila) of spiritual authority stretching back to the Prophet Muhammad. Each order or brotherhood thus has its own spiritual lineage, which each individual is able to trace back through his order’s founder to the founder of Islam himself. The fact that most of these chains have ‘Alī b. Abī T.  ālib as the link which connects them to the Prophet has led a number of writers to misidentify Shi’ism as the ultimate source of Sufi wisdom. That ‘Alī is a crucial component in the spiritual makeup of both Shi’ism and Sufism is undeniable, but hardly proof that the former is responsible for the latter. Indeed, historically speaking, Sufism has been a largely Sunni phenomenon; while Sufi orders identifiable as being Shi’ite in outlook have existed, these were the exception and not the rule. Inevitably, in the gradual institutionalisation of Sufism lay the seeds of its decay. With time, the once spontaneous spirituality of the individual became subordinated to conformity and group experience. With the rise of the shaykhs and murshids as spiritual guides, individuality often gave way to blind imitation, and the transformation of sincere disciples into unthinking devotees. The spread of the Sufi orders across the Muslim world, especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the interaction of diverse cultural and religious traditions meant that innovative practices began to creep in, working at variance with the original aims of Sufism and creating sects and factions that were totally removed from the spirituality of the early adepts. It is for this reason that from the early medieval period onwards we are able to talk in terms of the parallel development of two types of Sufism. The first is mainstream or what may be called ‘high’ Sufism. This was the form of Sufi belief and practice that remained more or less faithful to the ideals of the early Sufis. It was typified by highly orthodox Sunni orders such as the Mawlawiyya (Mevlevi), centred in Anatolia, and the Naqshbandiyya, centred in Transoxania. The second type of Sufism to emerge was ‘folk’ Sufism, present in orders such as the Bektāshiyya and the H .   urūfiyya, some of whose rituals and practices were highly questionable, not only in the eyes of the orthodox Muslim jurists who saw all forms of Sufism as suspect, but also in the view of the ‘high’ Sufi adepts themselves. ‘Folk Sufism’ owes little if anything to the wisdom of the early Sufis or the leaders of the ‘high’ Sufi Orders, and even less to the spiritual teachings of the Quran. Its origins are obscure, but it seems to have evolved on the geographical fringes of the Muslim world, amongst the largely nomadic Muslims in remote rural areas where the teachings of Islam were conflated with a variety of beliefs and practices taken from Hinduism, Buddhism,

340

  Spirituality gnostic Christianity and shamanism. The progenitors of ‘folk Sufism’, as well as other ‘heterodox’ forms of religious belief and practice, later came to be known as ghulāt or ‘extremists’. These were individuals who were nominally Muslim, but who suscribed to doctrines deemed heretical enough to place them outside the pale of Islam. Beliefs such as tashbīh (anthropomorphism with respect to God), tanāsukh (the transmigration of souls) and h. ulūl (Divine incarnation in man) were prevalent among the early ghulāt and later became incorporated into ‘folk Sufism’, although doctrines and practices differed greatly from region to region.7 The prevalence of Sufism, in all its shades and varieties, throughout the medieval period cannot be overstated. The renowned Muslim chronicler al-Maqdīsī, describing the Persian city of Shiraz towards the end of the tenth century, tells us that “Sufis were numerous, commemorating God in their mosques after the Friday prayer and reciting blessings on the Prophet from the pulpit.” 8 Several hundred years later, and especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Sufis were still numerous, only now they had become institutionalised into ‘orders’ and were spread out across the central lands of the Muslim world. With the proliferation of Sufi orders came fragmentation, and the growth of a whole host of offshoot groupings and sub-sects, all flourishing openly and commanding the spiritual allegiance of vast numbers of people, educated and uneducated alike. Indeed, to see Sufism as some kind of exotic mysticism confined to a few ecstatic Sufis who found themselves at cross-purposes with the religious ‘orthodoxy’ is, in fact, to parody what was, for many, their only identifiable link to Islam. It is also to ignore just how commonplace the various manifestations of Sufism were in traditional Muslim society. Very often, tens of thousands of individuals were affiliated in some way or other to an order in any one of the great cities, and the main orders were prevalent throughout the whole of the Muslim world. In the context of the medieval Muslim world at least, while Sufism was a different approach to Islam, and thus to an extent in ‘competition’ with others, it was by no means peripheral or divorced from ‘mainstream’ or ‘orthodox’ religion. Indeed, with the emergence of Sufi orders in the early medieval period, Sufism was central to Islam and an integral component of the spiritual make-up of many, if not all, Muslim communities and societies, operating in its various forms and guises throughout all levels of society. Given the vast range of beliefs and practices included under the definitional umbrella of Sufism, to describe them in a few paragraphs and present them as the definitive outline of Sufi doctrine and ritual is clearly not possible. What follows is but a brief overview of those beliefs and practices that are most readily identifiable as Sufi in origin or nature, and which are common to most of the mainstream orders. At the heart of Sufi ritual is the practice of dhikr, which involves the methodical repetition of the names of God. This is done either silently, in the heart, or aloud, as a chant; it is done sometimes in private, sometimes in public. The word dhikr comes from an Arabic root which connotes both ‘remembering’ and ‘mentioning’, and it is believed that by bringing to mind and mentioning God’s ‘beautiful Names’ in a measured and meaningful way, one is helped in one’s attempt to attain constant awareness of the Divine in all of its aspects. Sufi ritual also includes the recitation of invocations, verses from the Quran and even poems; Persianate Sufism in particular has produced a veritable wealth of poetry, including

341

The Qur’an Revealed  the works of poets such as Sa‘dī, H .   āfiz.  , Jāmī and, arguably the master of all Sufi poetry, the redoubtable Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, whose Mathnawī is known to many of his devotees as ‘the Persian Quran’.9 In communal gatherings, dhikr and other recitations are sometimes accom­panied by music, although this depends very much on the particular orientation of the order in question. Each order favours its own particular style and format of dhikr recitation, reflecting the technique established by the order’s founder. In this, as with all of its devotional exercises, each order treads its own structurally unique spiritual path. As far as the use of music is concerned, some orders readily embrace it while others prefer to chant or pray unaccompanied. Similarly, some orders advocate a type of ritual performance known as samā, which involves highly stylised physical movements by its participants – hence the term ‘whirling dervishes’. Insofar as Sufism represents an interiorisation of Islam, its beliefs are identical to the core beliefs emanating from the Quran. However, at the heart of the Sufi endeavour is the quest for the purification of the soul. This is articulated in the form of a journey that each individual must undertake, known usually as the ‘path’ (t. arīqa). By the ninth century, Sufi writers had begun to write about their core beliefs in short treatises which focused on the journey or path which one needed to take in order to move towards God. Most of the early Sufi masters broke the ‘path’ down into ‘stages’ (maqāmāt), the number of which differed from teacher to teacher but all of which had the same goal: the taming of the ‘evilcommanding soul’ and communion with God. The archetypal Sufi, described as a traveller (sālik) on a journey, follows a path of seven stages: repentance; abstinence; renunciation; poverty; patience; trust in God; and complete submission to God’s will. At the end of this path, the spiritual traveller attains, with God’s grace, a higher level of awareness which enables him to see, through the ‘eye of the heart’, the fact that knowledge, the knower and the thing known are, in one respect, the same. While approaches and methods varied from Sufi to Sufi, the underlying message – namely that man was created in order to know himself and, in knowing himself, to know God – was the same. And, they claimed, it was only through the Sufi path that such knowledge was attainable. Sufism still exists today, although many would argue that for the past hundred years or more it has been but a shadow of its classical self, denuded of its intellectual and emotional vibrancy and fragmented, for the most part, into myriad pseudo-Sufi groupings, some of whom who pay lip service to the classical ideals yet function mostly as New Age movements with only the most tenuous of links to Islam proper. However, the principle at the heart of classical Sufism, namely the purification of the self and the desire for communion with God, lives on, even in the teachings of those individuals who claim no formal affiliation to a Sufi order or way of life as such. Nursi is arguably one such individual.

Nursi’s appraisal of Sufism and the Sufi paths

It is fair to say that Nursi’s appreciation of Sufism is clear from his writings, although he is adamant that the only kind of Sufism that is acceptable is that which does not depart from

342

  Spirituality the Quran and the sunna of the Prophet. That he made a distinction, as we have, between ‘high’ Sufism and folk Sufism is a given, even though he may not have articulated it in these terms. For Nursi, beneath the terms ‘Sufism’ (tas.awwuf), ‘path’ (t. arīqa), sainthood (walāya) and spiritual journeying (sayr wa sulūk) lie “an agreeable, luminous, joyful and spiritual sacred truth.” 10 It is a truth, he says, that he been taught in countless books by numerous scholarly authorities through the ages who have actually journeyed towards, and ‘unveiled’, such truths themselves. The aim and goal of the Sufi path is knowledge of God and the unfolding of the truths of faith through a spiritual journeying with the feet of the heart under the shadow of the Ascension of Muhammad (PBWH), to manifest the truths of faith and the Quran through tasting and certain enhanced states, and to an extent through direct vision; it is an elevated human mystery and perfection called the Sufi path or Sufism. Yes, since man is a comprehensive index of the universe, his heart resembles a map of thousands of worlds. For innumerable human sciences and fields of knowledge show that man’s brain in his head is a sort of centre of the universe, like a telephone and telegraph exchange for innumerable lines. Similarly, the millions of light-scattering books written by incalculable saints show man’s heart in his essential being to be the place of manifestation of innumerable cosmic truths, and to be their pivot and seed. Since the human heart and brain are thus central, and comprise the members of a mighty tree in the form of a seed, and within them are encapsulated the parts and components of an eternal, majestic machine pertaining to the hereafter, certainly the heart’s Creator willed that it should be worked and brought out from the potential to the actual, and developed, and put into action, for that is what He did. Since He willed it, the heart will certainly work like the mind. And the most effective means of working it is to be turned towards the truths of faith on the Sufi path through the remembrance of God in the degrees of sainthood.11

The goal of Sufism is thus to reach gnosis of God and to uncover the truths and realities of faith through a spiritual journeying which reflects that undertaken by the Prophet in his ‘ascension’. It is thus a journey that is undertaken by the heart, with its goal being direct witnessing (mushāhada) or ‘presential knowledge’ (‘ilm-i huz.  ūrī) of the Truth. In other words, Nursi believed that the aim of Sufism was, in encouraging purification of the soul and the pursuit of experiential knowledge, nothing less than the nurturing of the ‘perfect man’ that every individual has the potential to be. It is a journey of the heart because it is precisely that faculty of man which makes him a comprehensive summary of the universe or, to use the Sufi term, a microcosm of the whole creation. The keys to this spiritual journey, Nursi says, are remembrance (dhikr) of God and reflective thought (tafakkur), both of which are of inestimable importance for man’s life in the hereafter. They are also vital for man’s felicity in his earthly life too: Their virtues are indeed too numerous to be described. Apart from uncountable benefits in the hereafter and human attainments and perfections, a minor benefit pertaining to this tumultuous worldly life is as follows: everyone wants solace and seeks enjoyment in order to be saved a little from the upheavals of life and its heavy burdens, and to take a

343

The Qur’an Revealed  breather; everyone searches out something friendly to banish the loneliness. For one or two people out of ten, the social gatherings in civilized life offer a temporary, but heedless and drunken familiarity, intimacy and solace. But eighty per cent live solitary lives in mountains or valleys, or are driven to distant places in search of a livelihood, or due to such agencies as calamities or old age which recall the hereafter, they are deprived of the companionship of human groups and societies. Their circumstances allow them no familiarity, friendliness or consolation. For such a person, true solace, intimacy and sweet pleasure are to be found in addressing his own heart in those distant places and desolate mountains and distressing valleys, in working it through remembrance of God and reflection. Calling on God Almighty, he may become intimate with Him in his heart, and by virtue of that intimacy think of the things around him, which were regarding him savagely, as smiling on him familiarly. He will say: “My Creator, whom I am recollecting, has innumerable servants here in my place of solitude, just as He has everywhere. I am not alone; loneliness has no meaning.” Thanks to his faith, he receives pleasure from that sense of familiarity. He grasps the meaning of life’s happiness, and he offers thanks to God.12

Nursi’s emphasis on physical isolation as one of the reasons why believers gravitate towards a life of remembrance and reflection may have been true of the h. anīfs and the early Sufi masters, but it would be an exaggeration to suggest that Sufism is a product of solitariness and insularity. Nursi implies that one of the reasons that believers are drawn towards the Sufi path is their desire to ‘banish the loneliness’ they feel. Given the old axiom that it is possible to feel lonely in a crowd, Nursi’s discourse on isolation takes on new meaning. One of the reasons that the early Sufis were drawn to remembrance and reflective thought was not that they lacked company, but that they lacked the right kind of company. In other words, Sufism was in one respect a reaction to the kind of religion which may have satisfied the intellect but which did not satisfy the heart. The religion of the exoteric scholars, with their overwhelming emphasis on the externals of the faith, on rite and ritual, would not have been enough for those for whom the end was not the letter of the law but its spirit. Seen this way, then, isolation is not the cause of spiritual journeying but the objective: remembrance of God and reflective thought upon His names becomes a way in which the human heart may escape the tumult of everyday life, the demands made on its time by a myriad mundane activities, and the stultifying effects of religious externalism, all of which threaten not only its wellbeing but also the possibility it has of gaining the ‘friendship’ (walāya) of God. Sufism, then, appeals to the potential which exists in every human being to attain direct and sustained communion with God. Moreover, having followed the spiritual paths mapped out by Sufi teachings, many individuals in the past are accredited with having purified their souls to the extent that they are accorded the status of walī, or ‘intimate companion’ of God. This ‘intimate companionship’, also referred to commonly as sainthood, is the very apogee of spiritual elevation, and is clearly not achievable by everyone. While sainthood is a contested notion for some orthodox Muslim thinkers, for Nursi it is actually something which complements prophethood and confirms it. Sainthood (walāya) is a proof of divine messengership; the Sufi path is a proof of the sharī’a. For the truths of belief which messengership preaches, sainthood sees and confirms

344

  Spirituality with a sort of direct vision with the heart and tasting with the spirit at the degree of the vision of certainty. Its confirmation is a certain proof of the veracity of messengership. Through the experiential knowledge of the Sufi path and its unveilings, and through its benefits and effulgences, it is a clear proof of the truths and the matters which the sharī’a teaches; it demonstrates that they are the truth and that they come from the truth. Yes, just as sainthood and the Sufi path are evidence and proof of divine messengership and the sharī‘a, so they are a perfection of Islam and a means of attaining to its lights, and through Islam, a source of humanity’s progress and moral enlightenment.13

However, despite his profound appreciation of Sufism, and his insistence that Sufism – in theory at least – is perfectly compatible with the shar‘īa, Nursi never self-identified as a Sufi, and there is nothing to suggest that he was affiliated formally to any particular Sufi brotherhood or order. That is not to say that the teachings of different Sufi groups and masters played no role in his spiritual development; on the contrary, he was well acquainted with the teachings of the Naqshbandiyya and also had great personal affection for some of the luminaries of the Sufi tradition, ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jaylānī in particular.14 And it cannot be denied that there are numerous passages in the Risale-i Nur which may be mistaken quite easily for the writings of a Sufi master or mystic. Nevertheless, however admirable he found the Sufi tradition, he did not consider adherence to a Sufi path as being a prerequisite for human felicity in this world, let alone salvation in the world to come. What was important for Nursi was not so much the various Sufi ‘paths’ as the truths to which the Sufi masters aspired; for him it was the end rather than the means which mattered. Here he echoes another scholar who had a tremendous impact on his intellectual and spiritual development, Shaykh Ah.  mad Sirhindī, who is reported as having said, “In my opinion, the unfolding and clarification of a single of the truths of belief is preferable to thousands of illuminations and instances of wonder-working. Moreover, the aim and result of all the Sufi paths are the unfolding and clarification of the truths of faith.” 15 For Nursi, as for Sirhindī before him, the ultimate objective of all Sufi paths is “the unveiling and elucidation of the truths regarding faith”, and he believed that to reach such a stage of spiritual attainment, being initiated into a Sufi order and following a Sufi path were not required. Granted, a living Sufi guide – or, come to that, a dead one – may be of assistance on one’s spiritual journey, but in Nursi’s opinion, the only really true guide to the truth is the Quran, which addresses not only the intellect but also the spirit and the heart. Nevertheless, even though he did not believe in either the necessity or, indeed, the advisedness of adherence to a Sufi path, he defended the rights of others to pursue such paths if they felt them appropriate. Moreover, he defended Sufism in general against the attacks levelled at it by certain groups within the Muslim scholarly ‘orthodoxy’. Although the fact that Sufi sainthood complements the sharī‘a holds such importance, certain deviant sects have tended to deny it. They have been deprived of this light and they have caused others to be deprived. The most regrettable thing is that making a pretext of abuses and faults they have seen committed by the followers of the Sufi path, some literalist Sunni scholars and some neglectful politicians who are also Sunnis are trying to close up that supreme treasury, indeed, to destroy it, and to dry up that wellspring of Kawthar which distributes a sort of water of life.16 However, there are few things and ways and paths that

345

The Qur’an Revealed  are without fault and are good in every respect. They are bound to contain some faults and abuses. For if the uninitiated embark on something, they are sure to misuse it.17

Nursi was fully aware that all was not well with the Sufi orders of the day, but saw no reason why the faults of some Sufi groups or thinkers should be construed as indicating the invalidity of Sufism as a valuable psycho-spiritual approach to reality. The Sufi path should not be condemned because of the evils of some orders that have adopted practices outside the bounds of taqwa,18 and even of Islam, and have wrongfully called themselves Sufi paths. Quite apart from the elevated religious and spiritual fruits of the Sufi path and those that look to the hereafter, Sufi orders were the first, and most effective and ardent, means of spreading and strengthening brotherhood, the sacred bond of the Islamic world. They were also one of the three unassailable strongholds of Islam, which held out against the awesome attacks of the world of unbelief and the politics of Christendom. What preserved Istanbul, the centre of the Caliphate for five hundred and fifty years against the whole Christian world, were the lights of belief that poured out of five hundred places in Istanbul and the powerful faith of those who recited “God! God!” in the tekkes 19 behind the big mosques, which were a firm source of support for the people of belief in that centre of Islam, and their spiritual love arising from knowledge of God, and their fervent murmurings.20

To censure individuals for inappropriate beliefs is one thing, Nursi argues, but to attack Sufism as a whole on the grounds that some of its adherents have held views that are inconsistent with Muslim orthodoxy and orthopraxy is another entirely; it is nothing more than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is utterly wrong, Nursi says, to judge a whole order on account of the questionable actions of some of its adherents. In any case, he argues, such mistakes are usually made not by the masters of the orders themselves, but by novitiates who have obviously not understood completely the etiquette of the Sufi way. Sufism is therefore not to be condemned on account of the mistakes of some of its practitioners. But the Sufi way is obviously not for everyone, and Nursi, despite his fulsome praise for Sufism as an approach, made it absolutely clear that the Sufi way in general was fraught with danger. While in one respect it is easy, in another respect, the way of sainthood is very difficult. From one perspective, its path is very short, but from another it is very long. While it is a most valuable way, it is also a most dangerous one. And while its path is very broad, it is at the same time extremely narrow. It is because of these features that some of those who take the path end up drowning; others become harmful, and some even return [from the path] and lead other people astray.21

Nursi contextualises his strictures on the danger of Sufism within the two main forms that he says the ‘mystical voyage’ takes: the ‘journey into the inner self ’ (sayr-i anfusī) and the ‘journey across the horizons’ (sayr-i āfāqī). The first way starts from the self and, drawing the eyes away from the outer world, looks to the heart. It pierces egotism, opens up a way from the heart, and finds reality. Then it

346

  Spirituality enters the outer world. The outer world then looks luminous. The journey is completed quickly on this way. The reality seen in the inner world is seen on a large scale in the outer world. Most of the paths that practise silent recollection take this way. The essential principles are breaking the ego, renouncing the desires of the flesh, and killing the evilcommanding soul. The second way starts from the outer world; it gazes on the reflections of the divine names and attributes in their places of manifestation in the greater sphere, then it enters the inner world. It observes their lights on a small scale in the sphere of the heart and opens up the shortest way within them. It sees that the heart is a mirror to the Eternally Besought One, and is united with the goal it is seeking.22

In Nursi’s opinion, whether one starts from the inner world or the outer world, the possible perils which await the unwary are considerable. If people who travel the first way are unsuccessful in killing the evil-commanding soul, and if they cannot give up the desires of the flesh and break the ego, they fall from the rank of thanks to that of pride, then descend from pride to conceit. If such a person feels the captivation of love and becomes intoxicated by it, he will make high-flown claims far exceeding his mark, called ecstatic utterances. This is harmful both for himself and for others.23

For example, Nursi says, if a lieutenant were to become conceited on account of his ability to give orders and be obeyed, delusions of grandeur may overtake him and he may start acting as though he were a field-marshal, thus confusing his small sphere of authority with a much vaster one. He will, Nursi, writes, “confuse a sun that appears in a small mirror with the sun whose manifestation appears in all its splendour on the surface of the ocean, all on account of their superficial similarity.”24 In exactly the same way, there are many people of sainthood who, resembling the difference between a fly and a peacock, see themselves as greater than those who in reality are greater than them to the same degree; that is how they see it and they think they are right. I myself even saw someone whose heart had just been awakened and had faintly perceived in himself the mystery of sainthood; he supposed himself to be the supreme ‘spiritual pole’ and assumed airs accordingly. I said to him: “My brother, just as the law of sovereignty has particular and universal manifestations from the office of Prime Minister down to that of District Officer, so sainthood and the rank of spiritual pole have varying spheres and manifestations. Each station has many shades and shadows. You have evidently seen the manifestation of the rank of supreme spiritual pole, the equivalent of Prime Minister, in your own sphere, which is like that of a District Officer, and you have been deceived. What you saw was right, but your judgement of it was wrong. To a fly, a cup of water is a small sea.” The person came to his senses, God willing, as a result of this answer of mine, and was saved from the abyss.25

Nursi goes on to say that he has even come across some people who, on account of having travelled a little way along the Sufi spiritual path and become enraptured by its pleasures, have actually proclaimed that they are the Mahdi. Such people are not liars and deceivers; they are deceived. They suppose what they see to be reality. As the divine names have manifestations from the sphere of the Sublime

347

The Qur’an Revealed  Throne down to an atom, and their places of manifestation differ to the same degree, so the degrees of sainthood, which consist of manifesting the names, differ in the same way. The most important reason for the confusion is this: In some of the stations of the saints, the characteristics of the Mahdi’s function may be observed, or a special relation may be formed with the Supreme Spiritual Pole, or with Khidr; certain stations are connected with certain famous persons. In fact, the stations are called the ‘station of Khidr’, the ‘station of Uways’ or the ‘station of the Mahdi’.26 Because of this, people who attain to these stations or to minor samples or shadows of them, suppose themselves to actually be the famous persons connected with them. They suppose themselves to be Khidr, or the Mahdi, or the Supreme Spiritual Pole. If such a person’s ego does not seek rank and position, he is not condemned to the state. His excessively high-flown claims are deemed ecstatic utterances for which he is probably not responsible. But if his ego is secretly set on acquiring rank and position, and if he is defeated by it and leaves off thanks and becomes proud, from there he will gradually fall into arrogance, or descend to the depths of madness, or deviate from the path of truth. For he reckons the great saints to be like himself and his good opinion of them is spoiled, for however arrogant a soul is, it still perceives its own faults. Comparing those great saints with himself, he imagines them to be at fault. His respect towards the prophets diminishes, even.27

The main danger of the Sufi path, according to Nursi at least, would thus appear to be the danger of self-delusion. The remedy for this, he suggests, is that the spiritual traveller should cling tenaciously to the handhold that is the sharī‘a and follow the teachings of those saints who also happen to be recognised as authoritative scholars of religion by the Muslim orthodoxy, such as Ghazālī or Sirhindī.28 They should constantly accuse their own souls, and attribute nothing to themselves other than fault, impotence and want. Ecstatic utterances made by followers of this way arise from love of self, for love-filled eyes see no faults. Because of his self-love, such a person supposes a faulty, unworthy fragment of glass to be a brilliant diamond. The most dangerous of all these faults is that he imagines the partial meanings which occur to his heart in the form of inspiration to be “God’s Word,” and he calls them “verses” (āyāt). This implies disrespect towards divine revelation, which is at the most holy and exalted degree. Yes, all inspirations from the inspirations of bees and animals to those of ordinary people and the elite among men, and from the inspirations of ordinary angels to those of the sublime cherubim, are divine words of a sort. But they are dominical speech in conformity with the capacity of the places of manifestation and their stations; they are the varying manifestations of dominical address shining through seventy thousand veils. However, it is absolutely wrong to use terms such as “revelation” and “divine speech” to describe such inspirations, or the word “verse,” which is a word proper to the stars of the Quran – the most evident exemplification of God’s Word. The relation between the inspiration in the hearts of those making the above claims and the verses of the Quran, which is divine speech directly, resembles the relation between the tiny, dim, obscure image of the sun appearing in the coloured mirror in your hand and the sun in the sky. Yes, if it is said that the sun’s reflected images appearing in all mirrors are the sun’s and are related to it, it would be right, but the globe of the earth cannot be attached to the suns in those tiny mirrors, nor be bound by their attraction.29

348

  Spirituality On the whole, then, the dangers which threaten believers on the Sufi path are far greater, Nursi implies, than the dangers which await believers who choose not to take that route. Before one can enter the Sufi path, he says, one must make sure that his belief is safeguarded, for it is belief and belief alone that is the guarantor of salvation. If the great Sufi masters of the past were alive today, he says, they would most certainly expend their efforts on the strengthening of belief: after all, one can enter heaven without having been an adherent of a Sufi path, but one cannot enter heaven without belief. And therefore because of its dangers, Nursi says that Sufism is no longer an appropriate means of spiritual expression in today’s world, particularly when there are other routes which are shorter and safer.

Nursi’s ‘fourfold way’

As we have seen, Nursi does not deem other spiritual ‘ways’ and ‘paths’ invalid: as he says in his discourse on brotherhood and sincerity, everyone has the right to assert that their way is best, but no-one has the right to say that their way is the only way.30 Nursi accepts that for some, the various methods used by certain mystics and by groups identifiable as belonging to the Sufi tradition may not be without effect. Nevertheless, a surer, quicker and safer way, in his opinion, is the ‘fourfold way’ that he claims is advocated by the Quran itself. The ways leading to Almighty God are truly numerous. While all true ways are taken from the Quran, some are shorter, safer and more general than others. Of these ways taken from the Quran is that of impotence (‘ajz), poverty (faqr), compassion (shafaqa), and reflection (tafakkur), from which, with my defective understanding, I have benefited. Indeed, like ecstatic love, impotence is a path which, by way of worship, leads to winning God’s love; but it is safer. Poverty too leads to the Divine Name of All-Merciful. And, like ecstatic love, compassion leads to the Name of All-Compassionate, but it is a swifter and broader path. Also like ecstatic love, reflection leads to the Name of All-Wise, but it is a richer, broader and more brilliant path. This path consists not of ten steps like the ‘ten subtle faculties’ of some of the Sufi paths employing silent recollection, nor of seven stages like the ‘seven souls’ of those practising public recitation, but of Four Steps. It is reality (haqīqa), rather than a Sufi way (t. arīqa). It is the path of Divine precepts. However, let it not be misunderstood. It means to see one’s impotence, poverty and faults before Almighty God, not to fabricate them or display them to people. The method of this short path is to follow the Practices of the Prophet (PBWH), perform the religious obligations and give up serious sins. And it is especially to perform the prescribed prayers correctly and with attention, and following them to say the tasbīhāt.31

The spiritual path prescribed by Nursi thus aims at four things: the admission of one’s impotence; the acknowledgement of one’s existential poverty; the realisation that compassion is the key principle upon which the cosmos is founded; and the attainment of constant reflection, deliberation and self-awareness. To admit one’s impotence and to acknowledge one’s poverty, Nursi says, is to invoke God’s love and mercy, while to act with compassion and to reflect upon God and one’s own soul is to appeal to Divine compassion and wisdom. The path of ‘ecstatic love’ adopted by certain Sufi groups may have the same aims, Nursi

349

The Qur’an Revealed  says, but their way is longer and potentially more dangerous. The way of impotence, poverty, compassion and reflection comes directly from the Quran and the sunna of the Prophet, he says. It is therefore not like the stereotypical Sufi ‘path’ with its various psycho-spiritual techniques, rites and rituals. Rather, it means simply seeing oneself as the Quran says the self should be seen, namely as an impotent, poverty-stricken being in constant need of worship and Divine succour. The Nursian spiritual path is one which aims at continuous awareness and self-reflection, together with the stringent adherence to the precepts of the Quran and the practices of the Prophet. While impotence, poverty, compassion and reflection are the objectives of the Nursian spiritual path, the means to those objectives – the ‘steps’ that one takes on the ‘journey’ – involve a process known as the purification of the soul (tazkiyya al-nafs). The centrality of this process to Muslim spirituality is such that virtually all Sufi and mystical groups advocate it, albeit in different ways and incorporating different methods and techniques. Nursi’s description of the way in which tazkiyya is to be effected draws heavily, as one might expect, on the Quranic origin of the process. The four steps to purification are foreshadowed, he says, by the four Quranic verses below: Those who avoid great sins and shameful deeds, only (falling into) small faults,- verily thy Lord is ample in forgiveness. He knows you well when He brings you out of the earth, and when ye are hidden in your mothers’ wombs. Therefore justify not yourselves (by considering yourselves pure): He knows best who it is that guards against evil 32 And be ye not like those who forgot God; and He made them forget their own souls! Such are the rebellious transgressors! 33 Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from God; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thy (own) soul. And We have sent thee as a messenger to (instruct) mankind. And enough is God for a witness. 34 And call not, besides God, on another god. There is no god but He. Everything (that exists) will perish except His own Face. To Him belongs the Command, and to Him will ye (all) be brought back. 35

Nursi says that the opening verse above points to the ‘first step’ that man should take on his way to purification. As the verse which includes the phrase Therefore, do not justify yourselves suggests, man’s first step is not to consider his soul to be pure. For on account of his nature and innate disposition, man loves himself. Indeed, he loves himself before anything else, and only himself. He sacrifices everything other than himself to his own soul. He praises himself in a manner befitting some object worthy of worship. He absolves and exonerates himself from faults in the same way. As far as he possibly can, he does not see faults as being appropriate for him, and does not accept them. He defends himself passionately as though worshipping himself. Even, using on himself the members and faculties given him as part of his nature in order to praise and glorify the True Object of Worship, he displays the meaning of the verse Who takes as his god his own desires.5 He considers himself, he relies on himself, he fancies himself. Thus his purification and cleansing at this stage, in this step, is to not consider himself pure; it is not to absolve himself.36

350

  Spirituality The goal of Nursi’s four-fold plan, like the goal of any other spiritual path or journey, is the purification (tazkiyya) of the self. But before this is possible, man has to acknowledge his need for purification, and the only way that he can begin to do this is by avoiding the temptation to justify his state. In other words, the prerequisite for purification is the admission, at the very outset of the spiritual journey, that one’s soul needs to be purified. The first step is thus to acknowledge one’s own flaws and deficiencies, and to do away with the habit of self-exoneration to which the instinctual soul is all too prone. Nursi catalogues man’s weaknesses in this respect with his customary forthrightness. At his lowest spiritual state, when he is still in thrall to the whims and caprices of his ‘evil-commanding soul’, man refuses to countenance the possibility that he has serious character flaws. He is unable to admit that self-love pushes him to consider his own position before that of anyone else, or that his desire for self-aggrandizement leads him to absolve himself of any mistakes, misjudgements or wrongdoing. At this level, each soul sees itself as sovereign, and the centre of its own universe; as the Quranic verse implies, it is the level at which one takes as one’s god the caprices of one’s instinctual soul. The first step, Nursi says, is to shatter the idol of the self by refusing to absolve it of flaws and defects. The first step towards purity is thus not to consider the soul pure. The second step, Nursi says, is alluded to in the second of the verses quote above. As the verse And be not like those who forget God, and He therefore makes them forget their own selves teaches, man is oblivious of himself, and is not aware of himself. If he thinks of death, it is in relation to others. If he sees transience and decline, he does not attribute them to himself. His evil-commanding soul demands that when it comes to inconvenience and service of others, he forgets himself, but when it comes to receiving his recompense, and to benefits and enjoyment, he thinks of himself, and takes his own part fervently. His purification, cleansing and training at this stage is the reverse of this state. That is to say, when oblivious of himself, it is not to be oblivious. That is, to forget himself when it comes to pleasure, and ambition and greed, and to think of himself when it comes to death and service of others.37

The ‘evil-commanding soul’, Nursi says, is Janus-faced: when it comes to things such as death, transience and decline, or the service of others, man conveniently forgets that they apply to him as much as they do to others; when it comes to material benefit and personal gain, however, he forgets everyone else and thinks only of himself. According to the Quran, obliviousness (nisyān) is part of man’s creational make-up,38 and when man is slave to his ‘evil-commanding soul’, it is something which he uses selectively, for his own benefit. While it may seem counterintuitive, obliviousness is not an inherently negative faculty, even though the fact that it is very often used in a negative manner has moved countless Muslim moralists through the ages to denounce it as something akin to a disease of the soul. Nursi approaches it from a different angle, seeing the ability to forget as something which can be used to man’s advantage. At this stage of tazkiyya, Nursi asserts, man has to learn to use forgetfulness in the right way. In other words, when his ‘evil-commanding soul’ prompts him to forget, he needs to make sure that he remembers, and when it urges him to remember, he needs to make sure that he forgets. In this way he will become attentive to that

351

The Qur’an Revealed  which is important – the remembrance of death, service to others and so on – and oblivious to that which is deadly, namely the demands and caprices of his instinctual soul. The verse Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from God; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thy (own) soul 39 is connected to the third ‘step’ of the Nursian path to the purification: As the verse Whatever good happens to you is from God, but whatever evil befalls you is from yourself teaches, the nature of the evil-commanding soul demands that it always considers goodness to be from itself and it becomes vain and conceited. Thus, in this Step, a person sees only faults, defects, impotence and poverty in himself, and understands that all his good qualities and perfections are bounties bestowed on him by the All-Glorious Creator. He gives thanks instead of being conceited, and offers praise instead of boasting. According to the meaning of the verse Truly he succeeds who purifies it, his purification at this stage is to know his perfection to lie in imperfection, his power in impotence, and his wealth in poverty.40

The third step towards purification involves man’s internalisation of the fact that all that is good stems from God, and that man, whose existential poverty precludes the possibility of his creating anything, has absolutely no locus to ascribe any of the attributes of perfection to himself. Every good quality that man has, he has by virtue of its being bestowed on him by God. However, the nature of the ‘evil-commanding soul’ is thus that it misappropriates the Divine names and claims them as its own. In this third step, Nursi says, man has to make a conscious effort to remind himself of his own impotence and poverty, and to reinforce constantly the idea that he is, in and of himself, nothing. In Nursi’s view, to admit one’s own imperfection is to take a step closer to the attributes of perfection of God; to admit one’s impotence is to become more aware of the Divine power manifested in him; and to admit one’s existential poverty is to grow richer in spiritual wealth. The fourth step of the Nursian path is alluded to, he says, in the Quranic assertion that Everything (that exists) will perish except His own Face.41 As the verse Everything will perish save His Face teaches, the evil-commanding soul considers itself to be free and independent and to exist of itself. Because of this, man claims to possess a sort of dominicality. He harbours a hostile rebelliousness towards his True Object of Worship. Thus through understanding the following fact he is saved from this. The fact is this: According to the apparent meaning of things, which looks to each thing itself, everything is transitory, wanting, accidental, non-existent. But according to the meaning that signifies something other than itself and in respect of each thing being a mirror to the All-Glorious Maker’s Names and charged with various duties, each is a witness, it is witnessed, it gives existence, and it is existent. The purification and cleansing of a person at this stage is as follows: In his existence he is non-existent, and in his non-existence he has existence. That is to say, if he values himself and attributes existence to himself, he is in a darkness of non-existence as great as the universe. That is, if he relies on his individual existence and is unmindful of the True Giver of Existence, he has an individual light of existence like that of a fire-fly and is submerged in an endless darkness of non-existence and separation. But

352

  Spirituality if he gives up egotism and sees that he is a mirror of the manifestations of the True Giver of Existence, he gains all beings and an infinite existence. For he who finds the Necessary Existent One, the manifestation of Whose Names all beings manifest, finds everything.42

To understand Nursi’s fourth path, again it is necessary to bear in mind his teachings on the ‘Other-indicative’ and the ‘self-referential’ perspectives of reality. Here he is saying that if man continues to consider himself from the perspective of self-referentiality, he will eventually believe himself to be completely autonomous, self-reliant and independent. If he is unable, or refuses, to see the connection he has with the Creator, and fails to consider himself Other-indicatively, he will arrogate to himself names, attributes and qualities which, since he is actually nothing but a mirror to God’s manifestations, can never actually be his. All that he is and has is from God: in himself he is virtually nothing at all, dependent as he is at each instant on the effulgence of Divine grace to bestow on him the gift of existence. While Nursi talks in terms of steps, it is unlikely that he has in mind the linear progression of the soul from one stage to the next. In short, step one does not lead to step two, or step two to step three and so on; had he intended these to be understood as successive, he would not have referred to the ‘evil-commanding soul’ at each stage. Rather than ‘steps’, then, ‘methods’ may be a more appropriate way of describing the different psycho-spiritual means employed in the attempt to purify the soul. The four methods are to be used concurrently; indeed, if awareness of impotence and poverty is to be achieved, and compassion and reflection are to be realised, they have to be employed in conjunction with each other. Indeed, this path is shorter, because it consists of four steps. When impotence removes the hand from the soul, it gives it directly to the All-Powerful One of Glory. Whereas when the way of ecstatic love, the swiftest way, takes the hand away from the soul, it attaches it to the metaphorical beloved. Only after the beloved is found to be impermanent does it go to the True Beloved. Also, this path is much safer because the ravings and high-flown claims of the soul are not present on it. For, apart from impotence, poverty and defect, the soul possesses nothing so that it oversteps its mark.43

His way is a safer, surer way than the way of the Sufi adepts, Nursi argues, because it cuts out the ‘middleman’; rather than looking to the ‘metaphorical beloveds’ which act for the mystics as symbols and embodiments of Divine love, through declaring one’s impotence in the way Nursi advocates, one submits oneself directly to God. For example, Majnun became immersed in the beauty of Layla and in so doing drove himself to madness before finally realising that she was the reflection and not the one reflected; presumably, had he taken the Nursian path, he would have embraced the ‘true Beloved’ directly, without the pain of attachment to Its shadow. His way is also a safer way, Nursi assures us, because admission of absolute impotence will – in theory at least – guard against the kind of injudicious declarations and ecstatic utterances that fell from the lips of some of the more ‘inebriated’ mystics, which often led to their being marginalised and, on a number of occasions, executed for heresy.44 Also, this path is much broader and more universal. For, in order to attain to a constant awareness of God’s presence, a person is not compelled to imagine the universe to be

353

The Qur’an Revealed  condemned to non-existence and to declare: “There is no existent but He,” like those who believe in ‘the Unity of Existence,’ nor to suppose the universe to be condemned to imprisonment in absolute oblivion and to say, “There is nothing witnessed but He,” like those who believe in ‘the Unity of Witnessing.’ Rather, since the Quran has most explicitly pardoned the universe and released it from execution and imprisonment, one on this path disregards the above, and dismissing beings from working on their own account and employing them on account of the AllGlorious Creator, and in the duty of manifesting the Most Beautiful Names and being mirrors to them, he considers them from the point of view of signifying something other than themselves; and being saved from absolute heedlessness, he enters the Divine presence permanently; he finds a way leading to the Almighty God in everything.45

Not only is his path safer and surer, Nursi claims, but it is also more inclusive and accessible. Here, he takes the opportunity to criticise those who believe that in order to be constantly aware of God, they have to become oblivious to the creation – to the point of deeming it non-existent. He makes it clear that his criticisms are levelled against the proponents of the ‘Unity of Existence’ (wah. dat al-wujūd) and the ‘Unity of Witnessing’ (wah. dat al-shuhūd) – theosophical approaches to existence and entities which were discussed at length in Chapter Two. Neither of these is necessary, Nursi argues, in order to gain a constant awareness of the Divine presence, which is the ultimate aim of Quranic spirituality. Man does not need to consign the cosmos to conceptual nothingness. Rather, in order to grow closer to God, all he needs to do is to look at all entities as signs pointing to Him rather than to themselves. In short, spirituality in the sense of communion with God, which was our initial definition, involves from a Nursian perspective the constant endeavour to see all things – and especially one’s own soul – as being ‘Other-indicative’ rather than ‘self-referential’.

Invocation

Finally, we turn to the act of worship that lies at the very heart of the Nursian spiritual path, namely the practice of du‘ā. Often translated as ‘supplication’, the verbal noun du‘ā is derived from the verb da‘ā, which means ‘to call on’ or ‘to invoke’. What is understood traditionally by the du‘ā is the practice whereby the believer asks God for something, either for himself or someone else. There are numerous forms that du‘ā can take, and there is no specific formula that needs to be adhered to when a du‘ā is offered: it can be done at any time and in any place, aloud or in one’s heart, and in any language one wishes. Strictly speaking, however, and in keeping with the Quranic approach to the practice, du‘ā means ‘calling on’ God through the invocation of His Names and Attributes. While invocation is basically ‘freestyle prayer’, there are many pre-established texts handed down from the early Muslim community which show how the Prophet, his companions and members of his family ‘called on God’; most of these are supplications which are woven around the repetition of the Divine Names or contemplations on God’s attributes. Bearing this in mind, while ‘supplication’ is an adequate translation of the word du‘ā, ‘invocation’ is a more precise one; both, however, are used and may for the sake of convenience be considered synonymous.

354

  Spirituality References to du‘ā abound in the Risale, but in one treatise in particular – the First Addendum to the Twenty Fourth Letter – we are given considerable insight into Nursi’s approach to what he calls the very ‘spirit of worshipfulness’. Nursi begins his treatise on du‘ā by dividing it conceptually into three kinds: The first kind of supplication (du‘ā) is expressed through the tongue of latent ability (isti‘dād), through which all seeds and grains supplicate to the All-Wise Creator, saying: “Make us grow! Make our tiny truths sprout and transform us into the mighty reality of a tree, so that we may display the elaborate embroideries of Your Names!” A further sort of supplication through the tongue of latent ability is this: the gathering together of causes is a supplication for the creation of the effect. That is to say, the causes acquire a position whereby they become like a tongue of disposition through which they supplicate for and request the effect from the All-Powerful One of Glory. For example, water, heat, earth, and light take up positions around a seed, and their positions form a tongue of supplication which says: “O Our Creator, make this seed into a tree!” For the tree, which is a wonderful miracle of power, cannot be attributed to those unconscious, lifeless, simple substances; it is impossible to attribute it to them. That means the coming together of causes is a sort of supplication.46

In his exposition of the first kind of du‘a, Nursi posits the ‘latent ability’ of an entity to become something other or more than it is as the source from which supplication springs. For an entity in the phenomenal world to move from potentiality to actuality, it needs to move – or, as Nursi would no doubt prefer, it needs to be moved – from one state to another. For example, an apple seed has the potential to become an apple tree. However, its lack of self-sufficiency means that it is dependent on apparent causes – and ultimately, of course, the Causer of causes (musabbib al-asbāb) – to change from a seed into a shoot, from a shoot into an apple sapling, and from an apple sapling into a full-grown, fruit-bearing apple tree. In short, the seed’s focus is on what is ‘written’ inside it, namely its future existence as an apple tree. Since the seed is unable to act itself in order to reach its potential, that very potential itself is portrayed as a kind of yearning for fulfilment. Nursi actually puts words into the mouth of the seed, which invokes its Creator directly and asks Him to bring into existence that which has been ‘written’ for it. It is as though the seed is saying to its Creator, “I am nothing but the embodied ability to become a tree. So make me into that which I am destined to be!” Nursi’s interpretation of potentiality as a form of du‘ā should be considered in the context of his understanding of love (mah. abba), which he considers to be the motivating force behind Divine creativity and the rationale behind all human action; this is discussed at length in Chapter Fourteen. Suffice here to say that if God is a ‘hidden Treasure’ who created in order to be known, each entity too, in its own way, is a reflection of that ‘hidden Treasure’, and invokes God to create it in order that it be known. The apple seed contains the ‘hidden treasure’ that is the apple tree, and since it longs to display that treasure, it ‘calls on’ God to bring it from potentiality to actuality. Nursi also explains the ‘coming together of causes’ as a kind of invocation made in order for the effect of their coming together to be brought into existence. As we have already seen, Nursi attributes no creative power to causes, which are merely the passive

355

The Qur’an Revealed  prerequisites or ‘occasions’ for the appearance of what appears to be their effects, but which in fact are created directly by God. Again, this has been discussed at great length in Chapter Three, and thus the dynamics of causation and Nursi’s dismissal of the efficacy of causes need not concern us. His point here is to drive home the inability of causes to bring about the effects we ascribe to them, and to portray their coming together in order that an effect may emerge as a kind of congregational du‘ā – a sort of collective acknowledgement on the part of those causes that they, too, have the capacity to uncover the ‘hidden treasure’ of the effect to whose emergence their joining together contributes. Thus sun, rain and various nutrients in the soil ‘gather round’ the apple seed and ‘call on’ God in order that their existence be the ‘occasion’ or apparent cause for the emergence of the apple sapling and, eventually, the apple tree with its numerous fruits. The second form of invocation identified by Nursi is that which arises from the awareness that entities have of their own existential poverty. The second sort of supplication is expressed through the tongue of innate need. It is a sort of supplication made by all living creatures to the All-Compassionate Creator to give them the things they need and desire, which are beyond their power and will, from unexpected places and at the appropriate time. For an All-Wise and Compassionate One sends them all these things at the right time, from places they do not know, beyond their power and will. Their hands cannot reach them. That is to say, the bestowal is the result of supplication. In short, all that rises to the Divine Court from the universe is a supplication. Those things that are causes seek the effects from God.47

If an entity’s ‘yearning’ for what it is capable of becoming constitutes a supplication that arises from its innate potentiality, then an entity’s expression of need for those things which will allow it to move from potentiality to actuality constitute a supplication that arises from innate poverty. While the apple seed, for example, contains within it the potential to become a sapling and then a tree, in order for it to fulfil its potential it stands in need of numerous things which it cannot access by itself. Innate need, then, becomes the ground for supplication, for ‘calling on’ God to provide what is necessary for the entity to remain in existence and to progress to its ‘point of perfection’. Nursi extends this second kind of supplication to all living creatures, although there is nothing to suggest that the first kind is any different: all beings capable of growth are characterised by both potential and innate need, and so both kinds of supplication may be applied to all levels of animate existence. While the third kind of supplication also involves need, it is the need of conscious beings – and humans in particular – to which Nursi appears to be referring. The third kind of supplication is that made by conscious beings arising from need. If it is made at a time of desperate need, or is completely conformable with innate need, or if it is close to the tongue of latent ability, or is made with the tongue of a pure, sincere heart, this supplication is virtually always acceptable. The greater part of human progress and most discoveries are the result of a sort of supplication. The things they call the wonders of civilization and the matters and discoveries they think are a source of pride are the result of what is in effect supplication. They were asked for with a sincere tongue of latent ability and so were given to them. So long as there is nothing preventing them and they

356

  Spirituality are conformable with conditions, supplications made through the tongue of latent ability and the tongue of innate need are always acceptable.48

This third kind of supplication would seem to describe the kind of serious and sincere efforts that conscious beings make in order to realise their potential and fulfil their innate needs, whether their attempts are carried out in conscious acknowledgement of their absolute dependence on God or not. Indeed, Nursi’s assertion that much of what passes as human progress is the result of supplication would suggest that acknowledgement of God as the true provider of needs is not an issue here. Effort expended seriously and sincerely in the pursuit of viable goals will, if conditions are favourable, usually result in success, whether the person expending that effort relies consciously on God’s succour or not. However, that which the unbeliever attributes to his own effort is, Nursi maintains, the result of invocation, whatever he or she may think. For invocation means ‘calling on’ God, and although this is meaningless for the unbeliever, unbelief does not change the fact that there is nothing but God that can be ‘called on’. To ‘call on’ God means to invoke the Divine names, and in the context of the believer, this simply means to have recourse to the attributes of perfection reflected in his or her being. Nursi then mentions briefly that this kind of supplication has a second form, and while he does not go into great detail as to its dynamics, it is clear from similar passages elsewhere in the Risale that he is talking about the two kinds of supplication made consciously by believers: verbal supplication (du‘ā-i qawlī) and ‘active’ supplication (du‘ā-i fi‘lī). Verbal supplication means literally ‘calling on’ God by invoking His names, aloud or silently, as an adjunct to canonical prayer or as part of private meditation and remembrance. The formulaic bismillāh – ‘in the name of God’ – uttered traditionally at the beginning of actions is an example of verbal supplication, as is the mention of any of the Divine names in particular. ‘Active’ supplication is precisely what it says it is: supplication through action. Nursi gives the example of ploughing. Ploughing, he says, is done not to seek sustenance from the earth; it is done, he says, “because the earth is a door to a treasury of mercy, and the plough knocks on the earth, the door to Divine mercy”.49 In other words, to act is to invoke God in the sense of having recourse to causes, which are themselves ‘occasions’ for the appearance of their appointed effects. To make a cup of tea, for example, requires the ‘supplication’ of walking to the kitchen, lighting the stove, boiling the water, adding the tea and pouring it into the cup. Each stage of the process involves recourse to a cause, which in turn is the ‘occasion’ for the appearance of the required effect. At each stage, Nursi maintains, man – who is characterised by absolute poverty and cannot do anything without Divine fiat – is ‘invoking’ God by having recourse to the causes He has placed there as veils covering His action. Thus everything that man does is, in effect, a kind of supplication, whether he is conscious of it or not. The believer, Nursi says, should of course combine ‘active’ supplication with verbal invocation if he is to act as a bondsman of God.50 With regard to the efficacy of supplication, Nursi is unequivocal in his assertion that that to call on God will always yield results. The effect of supplication is great. Especially if the supplication gains universality and persists, it almost always has a result, indeed, its result is continuous. It may even be said that one of the reasons for the creation of the world was supplication. That is to say, after

357

The Qur’an Revealed  the creation of the universe, the supplications of chiefly mankind, and mainly the sublime supplications of Muhammad the Arabian (PBWH) were a cause of its being created. That is to say, the Creator of the World knew that in the future Muhammad (PBWH) would ask for eternal happiness and for a manifestation of the Divine Names in the name of mankind, indeed, on account of all beings, and He accepted that future supplication and created the universe.51

Not without reason does Nursi begin his discourse on supplication by citing the Quranic verse below: Say: “My Lord would not concern Himself with you were it not for your invocation.” 52

It is arguably this passage more than any other in the Quran which conveys not only the centrality of supplication to the endeavours of all human beings, but also the significance of ‘calling on’ God from a cosmological perspective. In the verse, Muhammad is told to inform his audience that God would pay no attention to them whatsoever if it were not for their invoking Him. The context in which the verse was revealed suggests that he was addressing unbelievers, and so we find evidence here of Quranic support for Nursi’s assertion that supplication is universal, and not something confined only to those who acknowledge the existence of God. Actions, earnest desires, sincere wishes – all of these count as supplication, even if those who act and desire and wish are unaware. Yet there is no reason to understand the verse solely in the context of the ‘supplication’ of unbelievers. Believers and unbelievers alike are characterised by the same innate needs and by the same state of existential impotence, and thus what applies to the figurative invocation of God by unbelievers applies just as much to those who call on Him consciously. In short, all that man is, has and does is down to his supplication – be it through the tongue of potentiality, innate need or active and verbal invocation. However, it is not only man who would be nothing without invocation; the very spheres of existence which he inhabits now, and which he will inhabit after his death, exist partly as a result of the collective invocation of mankind. It was the supplications of created beings, and those of mankind and the Prophet Muhammad in particular, Nursi says, which led to God’s creation of the ‘worlds’ in the first place. If supplication can be one of the causes of the creation of a whole universe, Nursi says, how can anyone doubt its efficacy? If ‘calling on’ God can bring into being the visible world, the world of the unseen and the world of the hereafter, who can doubt that invocation yields results? To understand why the invocation of created beings should be one of the reasons for the creation of the worlds, one would have to revisit Nursi’s discourse on existence and entities, which was discussed at length in Chapter Two. There, Nursi talks about the existence of all beings as forms in God’s knowledge prior to their emergence as externally existing beings in the phenomenal world. Their potential to exist in the phenomenal world as ‘mirrors’ to the Divine names, together with their innate need for those names in order to realise their potential, may be what Nursi means when he describes them as having ‘invoked’ God into creating the phenomenal world for them. In other words, they too were ‘hidden treasures’ who longed for external existence in order to know themselves and know their Creator, and thus their yearning to be was their supplication. The scope of the present chapter

358

  Spirituality does not allow us to say any more than this about the cosmological repercussions of the prephenomenal supplication of conscious beings, although a similar notion – the notion of the universe coming into existence as a result of love – both Divine love and human love – is discussed later on in Chapter Fourteen. Nursi’s point here is to emphasise the efficacy of supplication, for if calling on God is enough to bring the world into being, the fact that it does most certainly yield results is surely not to be doubted. The idea that the point of supplication is to yield results is, however, one that needs to be explored more fully. While man can invoke God’s names for whatever reason he wishes, there are some supplications handed down from the Prophet and other spiritual luminaries of the early Muslim community in which the yielding of a result is not an issue – if, by result, that is, one means the kind of outcome that is tangible, such as the invocation made for rain. For example, supplications are sometimes offered in conjunction with events that have happened or are happening, such as those which are offered at the time of lunar and solar eclipses. Supplications are also made for things which are unlikely to occur, at least in the lifetime of the supplicant. How, then, are we to view supplication in situations such as these? The answer, Nursi says, is simple: supplication is a form of worship, and worship does not necessarily look to results; in fact, the most sincere worship does not consider outcomes at all. As we have explained elsewhere, supplication is worship. Through supplication, the servant proclaims his own impotence and poverty. The apparent aims mark the times of the supplication and the supplicatory worship; they are not the true benefits. The benefits of worship look to the hereafter. If the worldly aims are not obtained, it may not be said: “The supplication was not accepted.” It should rather be said: “The time for the supplication has still not ended.” Also, is it at all possible that eternal happiness, which all the believers have asked for at all times, continuously, with complete sincerity and yearning and entreaty, should not be given to them, and that the Absolutely Generous One, the Absolutely Compassionate One, Who according to the testimony of all the universe possesses boundless mercy, should not accept their supplications and that eternal happiness should not exist? 53

If man is nothing without supplication, it follows that invoking God is bound to produce results in this world. However, while supplications are always answered, it may – as we shall see shortly – not always be in ways that the supplicant expects. Nursi points out that true supplication looks to benefits in the hereafter. Supplication during times of illness, for example, allows the supplicant to acknowledge and admit his own impotence: by invoking the Divine name ‘Healer’, the primary aim should be the worshipful recognition that healing is effected directly by God and not by secondary causes, as well as the fact that illness has been given in order that the supplicant have the opportunity to commune with God and enter into conversation with Him. If the illness continues, this is not an indication, Nursi assures us, that the supplication has not been accepted; rather, it simply means that the time for invocation has not passed and that the supplicant should continue to invoke the Divine names. Admission of one’s own impotence and acknowledgement of God’s omnipotence will most definitely produce benefits in the hereafter, Nursi says, even if they do not appear

359

The Qur’an Revealed  to produce the kind of benefits one might expect in this world. Since God has declared in the Quran that He will answer those who call on him, the non-acceptance of sincere supplication is unimaginable. Nursi mentions two ways in which ‘voluntary supplication by word’ – i.e. verbal invocation – is acceptable: There are two ways in which voluntary supplication by word is acceptable. It is either accepted exactly as desired or what is better is granted. For example, someone asks for a son, but Almighty God gives him a daughter instead. It may not be said: “His supplication was not accepted,” but that “It was accepted in a better form.” Also, sometimes a person makes supplication for his own happiness in this world, and it is accepted for the hereafter. It may not be said: “His supplication was rejected,” but that “It was accepted in a more beneficial form.” And likewise, since Almighty God is All-Wise, we seek from Him and He responds to us. But He deals with us according to His wisdom. A sick person should not cast aspersions on the wisdom of his doctor. If he asks for honey and the expert doctor gives him quinine, he may not say: “The doctor did not listen to me.” Rather, the doctor listened to his sighs and moans; he heard them and responded to them. He provided better than what was asked for.54

The outcome of invocation in this world is, therefore, subject to a number of considerations, not least the sincerity of the supplicant, the practical viability of the request and, last but not least, the dictates of ‘Divine decree and determining’ (qadar) – a detailed discussion of which can be found in Chapter Twelve. In short, all sincere supplications are answered, both in this world and the next, although not always in the ways that one might expect. Nursi’s example of the doctor is a telling one. A good doctor will always listen to his patients, but he will treat them in accordance with what they need rather than what they want. Nursi would therefore appear to be telling his readers that the key is to pray for what is needed rather than for merely that which is wanted. One may, if the supplication is sincere enough, get what one wants: Nursi’s example of the emergence of civilization as a response to a particular form of supplication is evidence that this is often the case. However, what one wants may not actually be what one needs, as the discontents of civilisation have found to their chagrin. When one invokes God consciously for what one needs, however, there is no way, according to Nursi, that God will not respond to man’s eternal benefit. And there is earthly benefit too, even if it is not given in material form: For the best, finest, sweetest, most immediate fruit and result of supplication is this, that the person who offers it knows there is someone who listens to his voice, sends a remedy for his ailment, takes pity on him, and whose hand of power reaches everything. He is not alone in this great hostel of the world; there is an All-Generous One Who looks after him and makes it friendly. Imagining himself in the presence of the One Who can bring about all his needs and repulse all his innumerable enemies, he feels a joy and relief; he casts off a load as heavy as the world, and exclaims: “All praise be to God, the Sustainer of All the Worlds!” 55

Finally, Nursi suggests that invocation is primarily about admission and acknowledgement. It is about man’s admission of his own needs and his acknowledgement of the One Who, as Sovereign of the cosmos, is able to fulfil those needs, be it in this world or the next.

360

  Spirituality Supplication is the spirit of worship and the result of sincere belief. For one who makes supplication shows through it that there is someone who rules the whole universe; One Who knows the most insignificant things about me can bring about my most distant aims, for He sees every circumstance of mine, and hears my voice. In which case, He hears all the voices of all beings, so that He hears my voice too. He does all these things, and so I await my smallest matters from Him too. I ask Him for them. Thus, look at the great breadth of sincere belief in God’s Unity which supplication gives and at the sweetness and purity of the light of belief that it shows. Understand the meaning of the verse Say: “My Lord would not concern Himself with you were it not for your invocation” 56 and listen to God when He says Call on Me and I shall answer you.57 As the saying goes: “If I had not wanted to give, I would not have given wanting.” 58

If God had not wanted to respond to man’s supplication, Nursi says, there would have been no reason to decree it in the first place. Drawing on the centrality of du‘ā to Quranic spirituality, Nursi’s philosophy of du‘ā is thus informed ultimately by the absolute dependence –the wanting and the yearning - that man, as a created being, is moved to feel when contemplating the Divine. For Nursi, the absolute nature of the Divine Essence and the attributes of perfection that It manifests, together with the concept of continuous creation and the contingency of all created beings, serves to show man that in and of himself, he is nothing, and that all he has, he has on account of Divine munificence and mercy. At every instant, in every breath he takes, man is nurtured and his existence replenished from the treasury of Divine names and attributes. Everything man is, and does, depends continuously on this effulgence of light, as it were, from the very Source of being Itself: were God to withdraw, even for a millisecond, His power from man, man would crumple into the darkness of non-existence. From a Nursian perspective, then, the purpose of du‘ā is not only to praise God, but to seek succour and support through the invocation of His names. In doing so, the individual reconfirms his spiritual poverty before God and acknowledges his constant debt of gratitude to God for manifesting His attributes through him, thus allowing him to exist as God’s vicegerent on earth. It is the notion of man as God’s potential vicegerent or representative on earth that prevents man from falling into despair on account of his innate nothingness as a creature. For so long as he does not appropriate them as his own, the attributes of perfection that he finds within himself can be his forever, so to speak, so long as they are used in the name of God, and for His sake, while man is on this earth. The misappropriation of the Names occurs when man denies his origins, rejects God and sets himself up as sovereign of his own soul, as we saw in Nursi’s discourse on the ‘human I’ in Chapter Five. The practice of du‘ā is encouraged in order that man may remind himself constantly who is the true Owner of all creation, and of man himself. Everything man does, he must do as the bearer – but not the owner – of the Names. As the believer progresses on this spiritual path, constantly invoking God and reminding himself of his utter dependence on Him, he will, Nursi asserts, gain strength, constancy and peace as a result. For he will rely for all things not on his own self – which cannot support even an atom for a single second – but on God, Whose power encompasses all things, and Whose support never fails:

361

The Qur’an Revealed  Whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks.59

The du‘ā, then, is the means by which man can progress on the spiritual road to communion with God, and to the point at which his own soul becomes so effaced in his vision of God, that it is as though God is acting through him at all times. A sacred hadīth records God’s confirmation of this: My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks. Were he to ask [something] of Me, I would surely give it to him, and were he to ask Me for refuge, I would surely grant him it.

Thus through supplication and the invoking of God’s Names, the soul of the sincere believer can attain the point at which he becomes a mirror for all of the names of God, thereby fulfilling his role as vicegerent in the true sense of the word; and by acting as vicegerent, serve as an example to others, as the prophets were an example to him.

362

Chapter Twelve On Divine Determining and Freewill Introduction And there is not a thing but its (sources and) treasures (inexhaustible) are with Us; but We only send down thereof in due and ascertainable measures (qadar).1 ... And the command of God is a decree (qadar) determined.2 And say, “The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills - let him believe; and whoever wills - let him disbelieve.” 3

If God is omnipotent and the Creator of all things, including, as we have seen in earlier chapters, our actions, in what sense can man be said to be free? And if man is endowed with volition to believe or not believe, as the Quran says that he is, how is this reconcilable with the fact that God not only has knowledge of man’s future, but also brings that future into being by his ‘command’, which is a ‘decree determined’? The issue of the compatibility or incompatibility of absolute Divine sovereignty with human free will has taxed the minds of scholars of theology since the birth of the discipline. The question was addressed by Muslim scholastic theologians (mutakallimun) relatively early on, leading to a series of debates during the early Abbasid period between various theological factions representing often radically different standpoints. The various groups who made up the Jabriyya, for example, held a number of beliefs that tended to reinforce the idea that man has absolutely no say in what happens to him, and is ‘predestined’ in every sense of the word.4 According to the exegete al-Qurt. ubī (d. 1273), the ‘twelve sects’ of the Jabriyya supported, inter alia, the following positions: No act is the doing of human beings; God does everything. We do perform acts but have no actual capacity (istit. ā‘a) of our own to do them; we are like dumb beasts led by a rope. Everything has been created, and nothing is created anymore. God punishes people for His own acts, not theirs. Follow whatever comes to your heart, and do what you deem beneficent. A human being earns neither reward nor punishment. Whoever wishes to act, let him act; the felicitous one is not harmed by his sins, and the wretched one is not helped by his piety.5

363

The Qur’an Revealed  In short, for the Jabriyya, man is ‘like a leaf on the wind, tossed now this way, now that’: he has no free will and his deeds are decreed and ‘predestined’ by God. The Jabriyya thus represent the ‘predestinarian’ approach. At the other end of the spectrum was a loose cluster of groups known collectively as the Qadariyya, who championed human free will and supported the notion of man’s moral responsibility. Their baton was later picked up by the Mu’tazilites, whose stance was in stark contradistinction to that of the Jabriyya. The Mu’tazilites, whose emphasis on the role of reason earned them the somewhat deceptive soubriquet ‘the rationalists of Muslim theology’, represent what has often been termed the ‘libertarian’ approach. The Quranic scholar and theologian Jalāl al-Din al-Suyūt. ī (d. 1505) describes the beliefs of the Qadarites – and thus by extension their ideological successors, the Mu’tazilites – as follows: They are those who claim that they possess in full the capacity (istit. ā‘a) to act, free will (al-mashī’a) and effective power (qudra). They consider that they hold in their grasp the ability to do good and evil, avoid harm and obtain benefit, obey and disobey, and be guided or misguided. They claim that human beings retain full initiative, without any priority in God’s will for their acts, nor even in His knowledge of them.6

The Mu’tazilite rise to prominence in certain theological circles in the 9th century came on the back of their refined restatement and sustained dissemination of the ‘libertarian’ approach to the issue of Divine power and human free will. They argued, for example, that not only is man free to act, but that he is able to establish the basic truths of religion on the basis of human ratiocination alone, without any need for revelation. Good and evil were, then, determinable by man through the use of his reason, and so his ultimate destiny as a rational free agent depended not on Divine fiat but on his own freedom to choose – and to bring into effect – his acts. The zenith of Mu’tazilite influence came during the reign of the Caliph al-Ma’mūn, who not only supported this particular theological stance but also initiated a kind of inquisition (mih. na) designed to root out and suppress all views that were deemed inconsonant with those of the Mu‘tazilites.7 Mu‘tazilite theology was eventually rejected by the majority of Sunni theologians, who now leaned towards the views of the Ash‘arites, whose approach to the issue of Divine Power and human free will was deemed tantamount to a compromise position between the two extremes propounded by the Jabriyya and the Mu‘tazilites. While the influence of Ash‘arism on Said Nursi is not inconsiderable, to pigeonhole him as an Ash‘arite in his theology would be to do a disservice to a scholar who was not averse to taking that which he deemed intellectually useful from a number of sources, even though some of them were diametrically opposed. His criterion was, of course, that it be in keeping with the Quran and amenable to reason. But before we look at Nursi’s approach to the issue of Divine Determining and human free will, it is necessary to outline briefly our terms of reference. One of the major problems throughout the history of this particular theological debate has been the definitional nebulosity regarding its key terms. Furthermore, unhelpful translations of our key word, qadar, such as ‘fate’, ‘destiny’ and ‘predestination’ have tended not only to obfuscate many of the key aspects of the discourse on Divine Determining, but also to perpetuate the notion

364

  On Divine Determining and Freewill – fuelled initially, of course, by groups such as the Jabriyya – that belief in the absolute sovereignty of God renders Islam a religion of inherent fatalism. The verbal noun qadar is derived from the tri-consonantal verbal root q – d – r, meanings stemming from which include ‘to have the power over’, ‘to measure precisely’, ‘to determine’, ‘to arrange’, ‘to devise’ and ‘to order’. The verbal noun qadar, then, can mean, among other things, ‘measure’, ‘limit’ and ‘determining’. Traditionally, qadar has been used together with qad.   ā, which means ‘to decree’, ‘to decide’, ‘to bring into effect’, ‘to judge’ and, also, ‘to determine’. The phrase qad.   ā wa qadar, or ‘Divine Decree and Determining’, describes the process whereby things are brought into being by Divine fiat in accordance with a preordained plan which determines their precise forms, proportions, life spans and certain other characteristics. The term qadar, then, means God’s determining, before its entrance into the external world, how a thing will be from the point of view of creation once it comes into being; the term qad.   ā denotes the execution or putting into effect of that which has been determined by qadar. Nursi does not deal explicitly with the concept of qad.   ā in his Treatise on Divine Determining, primarily on account of the fact that the lion’s share of theological wrangling with regard to the compatibility or incompatibility of absolute Divine sovereignty with free will has focused on the meaning and significance of God’s ‘determining’ rather than His ‘decree’. Nursi uses the terms irāda and ikhtiyār to express that which in English we usually call ‘free will’: the former connotes ‘will’ while the latter connotes ‘choice’. Nursi uses them interchangeably, often prefixing them with the adjective juz’ī or ‘partial’. Wherever it is has been deemed more appropriate in this chapter to employ the Arabic terms for ‘Divine Determining’ and ‘human free will’ rather than their English equivalents, the words qadar and ikhtiyār have been used.

Nursi’s discourse on Divine Determining

The fullest expression of Nursi’s ideas on Divine Determining can be found in the Twenty Sixth Word, also known as the Treatise on Divine Determining or Kader Risalesi. However, aspects of his discourse on the subject can also be found elsewhere in the Risale-i Nur, as well as in writings from earlier in his career.8 Nursi approaches the issue of Divine Determining from three main angles. Firstly he attempts to show how the coming into existence of all beings is effected with such order and precision that it is impossible to imagine that they might have been originated without first having been planned. For Nursi, the fact that every created thing appears in the manifest realm with what appears to be perfect form and proportion serves as evidence of the fact that, prior to their emergence into the visible world, they existed in some supra-material sense in the presence or knowledge of the one who bestowed on them their form and proportion. Creation, then, is nothing more than the translation of a potential being from its supra-material state into the materiality of external existence in time and space. The fact that everything which exists is determined means, in this sense, that their forms, proportions, measurements, spatiotemporal positions and life trajectories are all foreordained or, as it is expressed traditionally, ‘written’ (maktūb). Secondly, Nursi addresses the age-old question of the compatibility of Divine determining and human freewill and argues in support of his claim that while Divine

365

The Qur’an Revealed  omniscience and omnipotence may for some seem irreconcilable with the idea of human free agency, not only are they in complete harmony but also their interdependence and inextricability are acceptable to human reason. Finally, having brought evidence for the existence of Divine Determining and its compatibility with human free-will, Nursi looks at the psycho-spiritual benefits that accrue when men attain conviction, as the fundamental principles of belief require, that all things which exist, and all events which take place, do so at the behest of the Divine will, in accordance with the Divine decree and in a manner that is Divinely determined.

All things are ‘written’

Belief that ‘everything is determined by God’ is, Nursi states categorically, one of the pillars of belief, and is supported by ‘proofs’ so numerous, he says, that they are beyond calculation. We begin our exposition of Nursi’s discourse on qadar by exploring a section of the treatise which would not look out of place in a work of natural theology. Numerous verses of the Quran such as Nor anything fresh or dry [green or withered] but is [inscribed] in a Clear Book 9 state clearly that before it comes into existence and after it passes from existence, everything is written. Through its creational signs like the order, balance, regularity, adornment, differentiation and the giving of form, the verses and signs of the mighty Quran inscribed by Divine power and called the universe confirm these statements of the Quran. Indeed, the well-ordered missives and finely balanced verses of the book of the universe testify that everything is written. The indication that everything is determined and written before it comes into existence are all the beginnings, seeds, measured proportions and forms; each of these testifies to this. For seeds and grains are subtle containers appearing from the workbench of “Be!,” and it is 10 in each of which is deposited a tiny index traced by Divine Determining. Divine power employs minute particles according to that plan of Divine Determining, and constructs the mighty miracles of power on the seeds. That is to say, everything that will happen to the tree is as though inscribed in its seed. For in regard to their substance seeds are simple and similar to one another; materially they are nothing.11

Nursi begins his exposition of Divine Determining by citing, among other things, the humble seed as evidence par excellence of his claim that, prior to their emergence into the realm of external existence, all beings are as though ‘written’. Many aspects of the future of the oak tree, for example, are ‘written’ within the acorn from which it grows: in one sense, the acorn contains in latent form all of the possible future stages of development of the oak, should Divine power decree their existence. Divine Determining is thus a kind of plan – akin to the drawing made by an architect – and Divine power is what brings the plan to fruition. The oak tree is, in a sense, existent in potentia within the acorn: its shape, measurements and proportions at every stage of its possible future growth are there, ‘written’. However, whether or not the ‘plan’ which is in the acorn is developed and actually translated from potentiality into actuality depends on Divine power (qudra), which in turn is contingent on Divine decree (qad.   ā). Thus Divine Determining is that which draws up the ‘plan’; Divine decree is that which sanctions the coming into existence of the thing planned; and Divine power is that which actually brings the thing planned into concrete, external existence.

366

  On Divine Determining and Freewill The well-measured proportions of everything clearly show Divine Determining. Yes, whatever living creature is considered, it is as though its form and measure emerged from a wisely and skilfully wrought mould. For it to receive such a measure, form and shape, either there has to be a truly wondrous and infinitely intricate physical mould, or else preeternal power cuts out the form and shape according to a well-proportioned immaterial mould that exists in knowledge and comes from Divine Determining, and clothes it in it. For example, look carefully at this tree or that animal and you will see that the particles, which are lifeless, deaf, blind, unconscious and similar to one another, are in motion in its growth and development. In some of the being’s intricate extremities the particles halt, as though seeing, knowing and recognizing the place of fruits and benefits. Then in another place they change their direction as though following some important aim. That means they are in motion in accordance with the immaterial measured proportions of the tree or animal, which come from Divine Determining, and are governed by those proportions. 12

When something comes into existence, Nursi says, it has both form and proportion, both of which suggest either that it has emerged from some kind of physical mould, just as massproduced sculptures are produced from casts, or that it has been designed in accordance with a supra-material ‘mould’ which exists in that particular realm of Divine knowledge that is known as qadar or Divine Determining. All things upon which external existence is bestowed, Nursi argues, bears evidence of having been planned beforehand, just as a newlybuilt house indicates the existence not only of ground plans but also the ideas in the mind of the architect upon which those plans were based. It is not just the form and proportion of a being which provide evidence that it has been turned out of a supra-material ‘mould’; once it enters the realm of external existence, every stage in its growth and development attests, by virtue of the purposefulness of the creational direction it takes, to the fact that it is subjugated continuously to the dictates of Divine Determining. Motion and change are effected in that being by the movement of numberless particles, working together with the kind of harmony and precision that suggests not only self-awareness but also group consciousness and sense of purpose – none of which can be attributed to unconscious matter. The fact that beings develop in a particular way, reaching limits of growth and then halting as though cognizant of the fact that they can go no further, serves to demonstrate, Nursi says, that each of its movements and changes is also brought about in accordance with pre-determined proportions allotted to it by that facet of Divine knowledge known as qadar. Divine Determining thus makes itself apparent in a being in two ways: in its physical being as a created entity, with its particular form and proportions; and in the different changes and transformations it undergoes with the passing of time as it grows and develops. Since there are the manifestations of Divine Determining to this extent in physical and visible things, certainly the forms with which things are clothed with the passing of time and the states acquired through the motions they perform will also be dependent on the ordering of Divine Determining. In a seed are two manifestations of Divine Determining: one is ‘evident’ and points to the Clear Book, which is a title of will and the creational commands; the other is ‘theoretical’ and points to the Clear Record, which is a title of Divine knowledge and the Divine command. ‘Evident’ Divine Determining specifies the physical nature, states and parts of the tree which the seed comprises. While ‘theoretical’

367

The Qur’an Revealed  Divine Determining specifies the stages, states, forms, motions and glorifications which the tree will undergo and perform over the period of its life, and which are in the seed and will be created from it; these stages, states, forms and acts, which constantly change and are called its life-history, each has a regulated measure in accordance with Divine Determining, the same as the tree’s branches and leaves. 13

Here, Nursi endeavours to unpack the notion of Divine Determining a little more by compartmentalising it. There are, he tells us, two ‘manifestations’ or modes of Divine Determining: one is represented by the ‘clear Book’ (kitāb al-mubīn) and the other by the ‘clear Record’ (imām al-mubīn). Both terms are Quranic in origin. The first, kitāb al-mubīn, appears in a number of Quranic verses, often at the beginning of a sūra. For example: Alif, Lām, Rā. These are the verses of the clear Book. Indeed, We have sent it down as an Arabic Quran that you might understand.14 T. ā, Sīn, Mīm. These are the verses of the clear Book.15 And with Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them except Him. And He knows what is on the land and in the sea. Not a leaf falls but that He knows it. And no grain is there within the darknesses of the earth and no moist or dry [thing] but that it is [written] in a clear Book.16

The second term, imām al-mubīn, appears only once: Indeed, it is We who bring the dead to life and record what they have put forth and what they left behind, and all things We have enumerated in a clear record.17

For Nursi, the ‘clear Book’ represents that mode of Divine Determining which is ‘evident’ (badīhī). In the case of the seed, for example, the information ‘written’ in the ‘clear Book’ would pertain to the physical entity of the future tree, i.e. its shape, colour, proportions and other such tangible characteristics. The ‘clear Record’, he says, represents that mode of Divine Determining which is ‘theoretical’, and in the case of the seed would contain information pertaining to the different stages of the tree’s growth and development – its life trajectory, as it were. The ‘clear Book’, then, contains information pertaining to the creational plan and programme of all things which enter the realm of external existence. In seeds and eggs and sperms, all of the physical features and proportions of the beings that will be brought into existence from them are ‘written’. This shows us, Nursi says, that whatever enters the realm of external existence does so in accordance with a plan – a plan devised not by ‘nature’, as the naturalists would have it, but by One Whose knowledge is pre-eternal and all-encompassing, and whose ‘determining’ in the creational sense here is represented by the ‘clear Book’. The function of the ‘clear Book’ may be understood more readily if we use man as an example. Just as the oak is ‘written’ in the acorn, man too is ‘written’ in his own seed – or, more precisely, in his genetic coding. A wealth of information concerning his physical creation is encoded there: the colour of his eyes, the number of his fingers, the relative sizes of his different organs and members, the shape of his head and the symmetry or asymmetry of his facial features, and so on. In short, the measurements and proportions of man’s physical creation are all recorded in his ‘seed’, which in turn points

368

  On Divine Determining and Freewill to the existence of a ‘clear Book’ – a form of Divine knowledge – in which all of this information exists. However, while it is possible to know the colour of a man’s eyes and the number of his fingers from his genetic code, there is much information about his future that cannot be found there. It contains no information, for example, about which hospital he will be born in or where his first house will be. It will say nothing about which school he will attend, or whether he will have few friends or many. There will be no way of knowing from his ‘seed’ at what age he will marry, how many children he will have or whether he will be successful in his career. Yet none of these aspects of his life trajectory can be unknown to God, Who exists beyond time and space, and thus since the course his life will take in the future is within the sphere of Divine knowledge, it should also conform to ‘proportions’ that are determined, and the details of which are ‘written’. The place where these things are written is the ‘clear record’, which is simply a different mode of Divine Determining and a different form of Divine knowledge. Nursi draws a further distinction between the ‘clear Book’ and the ‘clear Record’: The Clear Record is a title for one aspect of God’s knowledge and His command, and looks more to the World of the Unseen than to the Manifest World. That is to say, it looks more to the past and the future than to the present time. It looks more to the origin and progeny, to the roots and seed of everything, than to their visible existence in the here and now. Yes, this Clear Record is a way of describing the knowledge and commands of God. That is to say, the origins, sources and roots from which things are brought into existence with perfect art and order show that they must have been arranged in accordance with a ‘notebook’ of the principles of Divine knowledge. And because the results, progeny and seeds of things contain the indexes and programmes of beings which come into existence subsequently, they show that they must be like a small register of Divine commands. In short, the Clear Record is like an index and programme of the tree of creation, which spreads its branches through every part of the past and the future, and of the World of the Unseen. In this sense, the Clear Record is a notebook or register of the principles of Divine Determining. Through the dictation and requirement of those principles, particles are employed in their duties and motion in things, as those things come into existence. As for the Clear Book, it looks more to the Manifest World than to the World of the Unseen. That is to say, it looks more to present time than to the past and the future. It is a title, a notebook or a ledger of the will and power of God rather than of His knowledge and commands. If the Clear Record is a notebook for Divine Determining, the Clear Book is the notebook for Divine Power. That is to say, the fact that everything in its existence, essence, attributes and functions displays perfect art and order proves that it has been given existence through the laws of an effective will and the principles of a flawless power. And, as well as its specified and individual form, everything has been given an appointed measure and particular shape. Therefore, the power and will have a universal and comprehensive register of laws, a great ledger, according to which the particular form and substance of everything is cut out, sewn and clothed. 18

While both the ‘clear Record’ and the ‘clear Book’ are modes of Divine Determining, and while Divine Determining is an expression of Divine knowledge, the ‘clear Book’ has a closer connection, conceptually, with Divine will (irāda) and power (qudra) than with knowledge

369

The Qur’an Revealed  (‘ilm) and command (amr). When a being comes into the realm of external reality, it does so in accordance with a plan or programme which existed in the realm of Divine knowledge before the being itself was brought into existence, just as a house is brought into being on the basis of architectural plans which were drawn up or ‘written’ beforehand, and which have their origin in the mind of the architect. The fact that knowledge of the being and its proportions exists before the being itself comes into existence points to there being a ‘clear Record’ in which all this information is contained. However, in order to be translated from the state of pure knowledge into external reality, the twin attributes of will and power are needed. In other words, will and power translate that which existed solely in the form of knowledge into something which has an external reality, just as the will and power of the builders translate into external being the house which existed previously only as a plan in the mind of the architect. In other words, Divine Will and Divine Power bring what was in the ‘world of the unseen’ into the ‘manifest world’, from whence it eventually departs, returning once more to the world of the unseen. Thus past, present and future are all subject to Divine Determining: they are not random and cannot occur haphazardly. There may be a certain feeling of unease on the part of the reader with regard to the notion that the future states of all beings are ‘written’ before they come into existence and are thus ‘determined’, particularly when it comes to the compatibility of such a notion with the concept of human free will. This is a subject that Nursi discusses at length and which will be analysed shortly. Suffice to say here that if we try to fathom the dynamics of Divine determining in all of its dimensions by looking first at a being for which free will is not an issue – a tree, for instance – the picture may become a little clearer. Let us consider a fully-grown oak tree, existing at this moment in time. To reach the point at which it now stands in its life-cycle, it has undergone stages both ‘evident’ and ‘theoretical’, to use Nursi’s own terms. The acorn split open, germinated, grew into an oak sapling, gained height and girth, and began to sprout branches, which grew to different sizes in different directions, eventually producing leaves and, in turn, more acorns. All of the information regarding the proportions of the tree, the height to which it would grow, the number of branches which would sprout from it, and so on, were ‘written’ in the program contained within its seed – the acorn. Everything pertaining to its particular creational state, at each stage of its growth and development, is recorded in the acorn. That the acorn holds such information provides us with an indication of the existence of the ‘clear Record’ – that facet of Divine Determining which shows us that nothing can come into being unless it be in accordance with a predetermined plan. The ‘clear Record’ is, as Nursi points out, the mode of Divine Determining which looks to the ‘unseen realm’, and to the past and the future, rather than to the ‘visible realm’ and the here and now. In the case of the oak tree, the harmony and precision of its creation points to the existence of a supra-material plan or pattern in accordance with which the oak tree was created. That the oak tree is evidently the result of purposeful planning points to its past, and to a time before its entry into the realm of external reality when it existed in the ‘unseen realm’, not as an oak tree but as a plan not yet executed – or in other words as an object of knowledge not yet translated into external existence. As for the acorn, the information it contains regarding the proportions of the asyet-to-be-created oak tree point clearly to the future. Everything, as we have seen, which

370

  On Divine Determining and Freewill pertains to each of its future stages of development – its proportions, the shape of its leaves, its colours and shades, the number of its branches – is encoded within the acorn. Again, this information points to the existence of the ‘clear Record’, which looks more to the ‘unseen realm’ than to the visible world. The oak – should it come into existence – is the future of the acorn, in which every creational stage of that oak is ‘written’. That the oak is a result of a predetermined plan in the past, and that the acorn holds within it a clearly determined future – the future oak – thus points to the existence of the facet of Divine Determining that Nursi describes as the ‘clear Record’. The ‘here and now’ of the oak – its existence in the realm of visible, external reality – is also a product of Divine Determining. However, it is a product of that facet of qadar which looks to the present, and which involves the twin attributes of will and power. In other words, although the acorn contains an oak tree in potentia, unless the plan existing in Divine knowledge is translated into actual being by Divine Will and Divine Power, the oak tree can never come into existence. It is will and power – Nursi often talks about the ‘pen of Power’ (qalam-i qudra)19 – which allow a being that existed only as a plan in the realm of the unseen to come into being in the visible realm of external reality. And, again on account of Divine Determining, it is brought into existence with harmony, precision and purpose, in keeping with the supra-material mould from which it has been cast. The will and power involved in translating the being from potentiality to actuality points to the ‘clear Book’, in which information regarding proportions and modes of existence of things as they are in the present moment is indicated. What we have not accounted for so far is something which has a direct bearing on Nursi’s treatment of Divine Determining and the notion of human free will, namely those events in the life of a being which are not ‘written’ in its ‘seed’ - in this particular case, the acorn. For while its shape and proportions at every stage of the oak’s development were written in the genetic code embedded in its acorn, other events – such as which birds would eat from it, who would carve their names in its bark, how much of its fruit would be lost to frost – were not. These are events which are not part and parcel of the oak’s creational make-up, but which have an impact on its existence thanks to the fact that it enjoys relationships with most of the rest of creation, the life trajectories of which often intersect and intermingle. Those events – the settling of a bird on one of the oak’s branches, the carving of a name in its bark – are, as Nursi is at pains to point out, not random events, for randomness has no role to play in a cosmos that is guided with absolute purpose. Those events too are the result of Divine Determining and as such are also ‘written’ in the ‘clear Record’, even if they are not inscribed in the oak’s genetic code. What applies to the acorn, and to the oak, must apply to all things, as Nursi points out. Since there is such a manifestation of Divine Determining in the most common and simple of things, it surely demonstrates that all things are written before they come into existence; this may be understood with relative ease. Now, evidence for the fact that the story of everything’s life is written after its existence are all fruits, which in this world tell of the Clear Book and the Clear Record, and the faculty of memory in man, which points to the Preserved Tablet; these all hint and testify to this fact. Indeed, the appointed events of a tree’s life are written in its seeds, which are like the hearts of its fruits. And man’s life-history together with some of the past events of the world are written in his

371

The Qur’an Revealed  memory in such a way that, as though copying out with the hand of power and pen of Divine Determining in a faculty as tiny as a mustard seed a small note from the page of his actions, the memory gives the note to man’s hand and puts it in the pocket of his mind, so that with it he will call his actions to mind at the time of reckoning. So too, due to it he may be confident that within the upheavals of transience and death there are numerous lasting mirrors in which the All-Powerful and Wise One depicts and makes permanent the identities of transient beings; and truly numerous tablets which shall endure for all eternity on which that All-Knowing Preserver inscribes the meanings of transitory beings. And so if plant life, the simplest and lowest level of life, is dependent on the ordering of Divine Determining to this extent, certainly human life, the highest level of life, has been drawn in all in its details according to the scale and measuring of Divine Determining and is inscribed by its pen. Yes, just as raindrops tell of clouds, and drops of water point to the existence of a water-source, and notes and portfolios to the existence of a large ledger, so too the ‘evident’ Divine Determining which we observe and which is the physical order in living beings indicates the notebook of Divine will and creational commands known as the Clear Book. Similarly, their fruits, seeds, grains, forms and shapes, which are like the droplets, notes and portfolios of ‘theoretical’ Divine Determining, which is the non-physical order and pertains to life, indicates the Preserved Tablet, one office of Divine knowledge, which is called the Clear Record.20

From the point of view of creational complexity, plants, Nursi says, occupy a rung on the existential ladder which is considerably lower than the one occupied by humans. Consequently, if plant life is dependent to such a huge extent on the intricate workings of Divine Determining, one can only imagine the extent to which qadar impacts on human life, which is considerably more complex and sophisticated. To conclude, then, we see clearly that at the time of their growth and development the particles of living beings travel to their intricate extremities and halt, then they change their path. At each of the extremities they produce the fruits of benefits, uses and instances of wisdom. Clearly the forms of those things and their measures are drawn with a pen of Determining. Thus, observable, evident Determining shows that in the nonphysical states of living beings also are well-ordered, fruitful extremities and limits drawn with the pen of Determining. Divine power (qudra) is the source, Divine Determining is the pattern. Power writes the meaningful book on that pattern. Since we understand clearly that the fruitful limits and purposeful extremities have been drawn with the pen of Divine Determining, physical and non-physical, certainly the states and stages which all living beings undergo in the course of their lives are also drawn with that pen. For their life-stories follow a course with order and balance; they change forms and receive shapes. Since the pen of Divine Determining thus rules in all living beings, surely the life-history of man, the world’s most perfect fruit and Divine vicegerent on earth and bearer of the Supreme Trust, is more than anything dependent on the law of Divine Determining.21

Nursi’s conclusion here is deceptively straightforward: what is true for the rest of creation must also be true for man. For if, he argues, the principles of Divine Determining apply to what are seemingly the most insignificant creatures in the cosmos, reason dictates that man, who occupies the most elevated position in the creational hierarchy, must also be subject

372

  On Divine Determining and Freewill to the same rules. Yet man is not an oak tree or an earthworm; while he is no different from them insofar as his being created is concerned, he is worlds apart with regard to his position as vicegerent and recipient of ‘the Trust’ (amāna). Man possesses something with which no other creatures have been endowed: the faculty of free-will and the power of disposal over that faculty in order to make conscious choices between alternative paths of action. And it is precisely this faculty – human free-will – which at first glance sits uneasily with what appears to be an all-embracing determinism that results from Divine knowledge, will and power. The issue of the compatibility of Divine Determining with human freewill comprises one of the oldest debates in Muslim theological history, and it is to Nursi’s approach – and possible solution - to this age-old problem that we now turn.

Divine Determining and human freewill

In response to the criticism that Divine Determining must by its very nature be at odds with the notion of human free will and the power of choice, Nursi adduces a number of arguments to substantiate his claim that qadar and ikhtiyār are compatible. Firstly, the All-Just and Wise One, to Whose wisdom and justice the universe testifies with the tongue of order and balance, gave to man a power of choice of unknown nature which would be the means of reward and punishment for him. We do not know many of the numerous aspects of the All-Just and Wise One’s wisdom; our not knowing how the power of choice is compatible with Divine Determining does not prove that it is not so. Secondly, of necessity everyone perceives in himself a will and choice; he knows it through his conscience. To know the nature of beings is one thing; to know they exist is something different. There are many things which although their existence is self-evident, we do not know their true nature... The power of choice may be included among these. Everything is not restricted to what we know; our not knowing them does not prove the things we do not know do not exist.22

The first two arguments are in a sense simple rebuttals to two slightly different forms of the ‘argument from ignorance’ fallacy. Firstly, the fact that we do not know how Divine Determining and free-will can be compatible can in no way serve as proof that they are not. Secondly, knowing that something exists and knowing its precise nature are two different things: we may not know how electricity works, for example, but that does not change the fact that it exists – or, indeed, that it works. Nursi’s second argument need not detain us long: there are some things the existence of which needs no proof since they are felt by us to be self-evident. Yet it is quite possible that their true nature is unknown to us. Inborn feelings are an example. That there exists something we call love is self-evident: we feel it, see it in others, receive it and give it back. However, while the exact nature of love may never be fathomable, the fact that it is there, and produces effects, is clear, even though its actual existence cannot be proven empirically. Similarly, the feeling that we have the freedom to choose between alternative paths of action is innate, intuitive and confirmed by conscience; the fact that we are not au fait with the true nature of that freedom is neither here nor there, and is certainly no grounds for denying that it exists in the first place.

373

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi’s first argument, however, needs further and much closer analysis. It may be tempting to suggest that his response here – “Our not knowing how the power of choice is compatible with Divine determining does not prove that it is not so” - is simply a restatement of the old argument that “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” It is important to point out here that Nursi is not saying this, even though the use of this popular argument has been imputed to him on occasion, particularly in his discourse on the proofs for the existence of God; however, this is largely on account of misreading of his work or overreliance on translations that are less than adequate.23 The phrase “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is highly problematic and should be approached with care. It is true that absence of a proof is not proof of absence, but the phrase “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is saying something different. In fact it is wrong, and its use indicates a misreading of the term ‘evidence’. Absence of evidence is indeed no proof of absence, but it is evidence of absence. In other words, it does not falsify absence; moreover, it gives reason for us to suspect absence. Precisely how convincing evidence of absence is depends on how hard evidence of presence has been sought. For example, if space scientists use every possible technique available to them in order to find evidence of life on Mars, but fail in their endeavour, then there is evidence that no life on Mars exists. The evidence may not be strong evidence, but it is evidence all the same. Evidence is something that contributes to belief, but it does not constitute proof. And here we are talking about evidence, not proof. That the phrase “Evidence of absence is not absence of evidence” is flawed becomes patently obvious when we consider the proposition: “There are no elephants in my living room.” It is clear that in this particular case, absence of evidence is evidence of absence: that I am unable to find any elephants in my living room is overwhelming evidence that there are no elephants there, because if there were, they would be easy to find. Absence of evidence, then, is most certainly evidence of absence. However, what one has to decide is whether the evidence is weak or strong. It is clearly not proof, unless, as with the case of the elephant in the room, one has been able to establish absence beyond all doubt. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence only if one has made a reasonable attempt to find such evidence. In that case, if one has made the effort and found no evidence, they have found evidence of the absence of evidence. Otherwise, if no attempt is made, there can be no known absence of evidence, only ignorance of evidence, or ignorance of the absence of evidence. It is ignorance of evidence that Nursi seems to be targeting here. Simply because we are unaware of how Divine Determining and free-will are compatible does not mean that we may conclude that they are incompatible. Nursi appears to be writing with those in mind who are unable to grasp the fact that qadar and free-will may co-exist harmoniously, but who have not made the necessary effort to consider the evidence which supports compatibilism. It is mostly to them, it would seem, that his arguments are addressed. The third of these arguments is as follows: Thirdly, the power of choice is not opposed to Divine Determining; indeed, Divine Determining corroborates the power of choice. This is because Divine Determining is a sort of knowledge. Knowledge is dependent on the thing known. That is, it knows it as it

374

  On Divine Determining and Freewill is. The thing known is not dependent on knowledge. That is, the principles of knowledge are not fundamental so that the knowledge directs the thing known with regard to its external existence. Because the essence of the thing known and its external existence look to will and are based on power. Also, pre-eternity is not the tip of a chain reaching into the past which should be considered the end point in the existence of things and a source of compulsion. Rather, pre-eternity holds the past, the present and the future all at once, looking at them from above like a mirror. In which case, it is not right to imagine an end to past time which stretches back within the sphere of contingency and call it preeternity, and to suppose that things enter that knowledge of pre-eternity in sequence, and that oneself is outside it; to reason thus is not right. 24

With his third argument, Nursi addresses one of the most intractable problems that people have when trying to square Divine Determining with free will, namely their tendency to misconstrue Divine omniscience as compulsion or coercion. The argument goes like this: If God has known from pre-eternity that X, whom He creates, will enter hell, and if all things are governed by Divine Determining, then the inescapable fact is that X was ‘destined’ for hell from the outset. How, then, can X be said to have free-will, given that God knew before X was born that he would end up in hell? In response, Nursi reiterates that Divine Determining is a form of knowledge. However, the knowledge of the knower depends on the thing which is known; the thing which is known is not, and cannot be, dependent on the knowledge of the knower. For example, my knowledge that X is a thief is dependent on my having seen him steal, or on my having heard about his stealing from someone else; his being a thief is not, and cannot, be dependent on the fact that I know he has stolen something. He is a thief regardless of whether I know he is a thief, and the fact that I know he is a thief has no effect whatsoever on his having become a thief, his being a thief now or the continuation of his thieving in the future. Similarly, that which is known by God does not depend for its existence on Divine knowledge: it not God’s knowledge of a thing which brings it into existence, or effects changes in its existential status, it is God’s will in conjunction with His power. Compulsion, therefore, is not something that can be predicated of knowledge, which is simply the awareness on the part of the knower of the thing which is known. Given this, it is meaningless for anyone to assert that a man enters hell because God has always known that he would, in the same way that it is meaningless for me to assert that it is my knowledge that X is a thief that has made him steal from other people and end up in prison. The issue which tends to confuse people when it comes to the question of Divine Determining is not the involvement of Divine knowledge qua knowledge but the involvement of ‘pre-eternal’ knowledge, or ‘foreknowledge’, which tends to support the assumption that if something has been known for all eternity, it must somehow be subject to compulsion. Again, Nursi tries to reassure the reader that knowledge – however far back it stretches – does not equal coercion. Pre-eternity, Nursi avers, is not some point in the infinitely distant past at which time began and all future events were decided. Pre-eternity and post-eternity are simply ways of expressing the timelessness of God and the fact that for Him, past, present and future are all one; they are arguably the best means we have of describing the indescribable.

375

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi attempts to throw further light on the issue with an example in which he likens Divine omniscience – of which qadar is a facet – to an all-encompassing mirror. Suppose there is a mirror in your hand and the area to your right is the past and the area to your left, the future; the mirror only holds what is opposite it. Then with a movement it holds both sides, but it cannot hold all of it. However low the mirror is held, less will appear in it, and the higher it rises, the area it encompasses expands, until it can hold both sides in their entirety simultaneously. Whatever occurs in the areas reflected in the mirror in this position cannot be said to precede or follow one another, or to conform to or oppose one another. Divine Determining is part of pre-eternal knowledge, and in the words of the h. adīth, pre-eternal knowledge is “at an elevated station which from its lofty view-point encompasses everything that has been and will be from pre-eternity to posteternity.” We and our reasoning cannot be outside of it, and if we can hold up a mirror, it is to the area of the past alone. 25

Nursi’s mirror is largely self-explanatory and needs no further analysis. There is, however, one important point which should be emphasised, and this concerns the notion of ‘preeternal knowledge’. Nursi is careful to explain that pre-eternal knowledge is God’s knowing everything which has been, is and will be, as though it were a single entity, in the same way that a vast mirror held high above the earth can reflect the whole of the earth rather than just part of it. Again, the terms ‘has been’, ‘is’ and ‘will be’ are there for our understanding, immersed as we are in the temporality of the causal realm. For God, of course, there is no past, present or future, which is why the notion of ‘foreknowledge’ is highly misleading – and part of the reason why the reality of Divine Determining has often been so hard for people to accept. For to say that God knows that something will happen ‘before’ it happens is to posit a Creator for whom ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ are sequential in the same way that they are for those who are time-bound. Nursi is careful not to use temporal expressions without qualifying them. For example, with his mirror metaphor he tries to convey the notion of Divine timelessness by saying that God ‘sees’ the past, the present and the future as though they were one. It is clear, however, that ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ are human abstractions and are neither experienced by God nor ‘seen’ by Him, at least not in any way that would be meaningful for us. When the finite attempts to understand the infinite, or the relative the absolute, the limitations of human language become problematic and we have no option but to try to grasp the ineffable through figures of speech, metaphors and approximations. It is true that many of them are linguistically infelicitous and, if one dwells upon them, actually dysfunctional to an authentic understanding of Divine reality. For example, how meaningful is it, when the truth be told, to describe God as One Who ‘creates’, or Who ‘sees’ and ‘hears’? On the one hand we cannot say that God does not see – otherwise He would not admit to seeing in the Quran; on the other hand, we have to bear in mind that while our seeing is from one perspective a reflection of His seeing, from another it is in fact nothing like His seeing at all, and that His ‘seeing’ is described as such in order for us to grasp an approximation of the ungraspable. As far as the phrase ‘pre-eternal knowledge’ is concerned, it is clear that it applies not to a timeless knower’s knowledge of events but to the recognition by a temporal agent – i.e. man – that there is such a thing as timeless knowledge. However, since we are in a

376

  On Divine Determining and Freewill sense ‘immersed’ in time, we cannot describe the timeless, and thus must resort to words and phrases which are theologically erroneous yet, when all is said and done, the nearest approximation to reality that we can achieve. Moreover, Divine Determining has a connection with cause and effect. That is, this effect will occur through this cause. For example, it may not be said that “Since X’s death is determined at such-and-such a time, what fault has the man who fired the rifle through his own choice, for if he had not fired it, the other still would have died?” 26

Since Divine Determining permeates the whole of creation, its connection to cause and effect is a given. As we have seen in earlier chapters, Nursi attributes no power to causes, seeing them as a necessary illusion which veils the ‘Causer of causes’ from human sight. However, man’s existence in a realm that is circumscribed by time and space, and by finitude and contingency, is such that the material world can be navigated only by means of cause and effect, however illusory they are in reality. Thus whatever is subject to Divine Determining will have a cause that is not only equally ‘determined’, but also tied inextricably to its effect. Thus if X dies of gunshot wounds caused by Y’s firing of a rifle, both Y’s action and X’s death are Divinely determined to occur as cause and effect. The sceptic, Nursi says, is unable to digest this, and says that if it is ‘written’ that X’s death will happen at a particular time, what fault is it of Y? If someone is going to die anyway, surely they will die regardless of whether someone shoots them or not? The reason why such a question is invalid, Nursi argues, is that Divine Determining specifies not only X’s death but also the fact that it occurs through the firing of the man’s rifle. Given the causal nexus of which we are a part, if we suppose that the man had not fired the rifle, and if we subtract from the equation the whole notion of Divine Determining, to which cause do we then attribute his death? If God had not decreed that X die as a result of being hit by the firing of Y’s rifle, how could his death have been decreed? During the formative years of theological discourse, this hotly debated question was answered in different ways by different theological schools. The Jabriyya, Nursi states, say that if Y had not fired the gun, X would still have died; the Mu’tazilites, on the other hand, say that if the man had not fired the gun, the man would not have died. In keeping with his neo-Ash’arite stance, Nursi navigates a careful middle position, claiming that if Y had not fired the rifle, we cannot say categorically whether X would have died or not.27 Let us consider the Jabriyya position first. To say that if Y had not fired the gun, X would still have died is to imagine a disjunction between causes and their effects. If it is determined that X will die at a particular time, then he will surely die at that time; this much, the Jabriyya accept. But in a causal world there will always be something which will ‘occasion’ that death: X cannot die without there being an apparent cause to account for it. X’s death and the cause – whatever it may be – exhibit simultaneity: they are brought into existence together so that one may be attributed to the other, and that the veil of causality which shrouds God’s direct creation of all effects may remain intact. In the example under discussion, to maintain that X would have died anyway is tantamount to a rejection not only of Y’s shooting but also of all other possible causal explanations for X’s death. For whatever efficient cause is attached to X’s death, the Jabriyya will, if they are to remain true to their own line of reasoning, still be forced to claim that in the absence of that cause, X would have died anyway.

377

The Qur’an Revealed  According to Nursi, the Mu’tazilites believe that if Y had not fired the rifle, X would not have died. Unlike the Jabriyya, whose apparent disregard for the fact that every effect needs an efficient cause leads them to the conclusion that even if Y had not fired his gun at X, X would have died anyway, the Mu’tazilites go to the other extreme. To claim that if Y had not fired his gun at X, X would not have died is tantamount to saying that being shot by Y was the only possible way that X could have died. For to posit an inextricable link between Y’s shooting and X’s death is to claim not only that causes are real rather than apparent but also that the connection they have with their effects is a necessary one. More importantly, to say that X would not have died if Y had not pulled the trigger is, by linking X’s death to one specific cause only, to impose draconic restrictions on God’s universal will. This is clearly in keeping with their indeterminist approach to qadar and their belief that man is the creator of his own actions. However plausible the Mu’tazilite argument may seem at first glance, it does not stand up to critical scrutiny. As indeterminists, the Mu’tazilites would presumably reject the idea that X’s death was determined to happen as a result of Y’s shooting, for that would imply that Y’s shooting must inevitably take place at that point in time, thus violating the Mu’tazilite belief that man is a free agent who creates his own actions as and when he wills. Yet when it comes to counterfactuals – expressing what would or would not have happened but could, would or might have happened under differing conditions – they appear to become as determinist as the Jabriyya, but with regard to the necessary link between particular causes and particular effects rather than to Divine Determining. It is an interesting question whether counterfactuals can ever be true or false, for the simple reason that we never get to experience them directly. If we disagree, as the Jabriyya and the Mu’tazilites did, on what would have happened if Y hadn’t pulled the trigger, what possible experiment could we perform to find out which approach is right? This rhetorical question is implicit in Nursi’s explanation of what he believes to be the only possible solution: if Y had not fired his gun at X, it is impossible to say whether X would have died or not. Transferring the scenario to the future may make the Nursian position more readily understandable. If Y fires at X and X dies, then it is clear that X’s determined moment of death has arrived, and that Y’s firing of the gun is the determined efficient cause of X’s death. The position of the Jabriyya – namely that X will die even if Y does not fire at him – is untenable, for reasons outlined earlier: the Jabriyya, as we have seen, give credence to no causal link between Y’s action and X’s death, and therefore become trapped in a vicious regress in which they can accept no efficient cause as the determined means whereby X meets his determined end. The position of the Mu’tazilites is similarly untenable. If Y has a gun at this moment but decides not to shoot X, we still cannot be sure that X will not die, for the simple reason that if his determined moment of death has arrived, God will employ other means as an efficient cause for his demise. Thus, as Nursi points out, with regard to the question, “Can we know what would have happened if Y hadn’t pulled the trigger”, our only response must be silence, for we can never be sure either way.

Divine Determining and human accountability

For human accountability before God to have any real meaning, and for the notion of punishment for disobedience to accord with Divine justice as described by the Quran, reason

378

  On Divine Determining and Freewill dictates that there must be a faculty within man that is attributable to him and him alone. The early theologians were well aware of this, for to deny man that very thing which would make him responsible for his actions would be to render any penalties meted out by God for human misdemeanour both arbitrary and at odds with Divine wisdom. What proved problematic for the theologians, however, was identifying precisely which component of man’s creational make-up could be identified as being his and his alone without compromising the absolute ownership and power exercised by God over His creation. According to Maturidi, inclination, the essence of the power of choice, is a theoretical or relative matter and may be attributed to God’s servants. But Ash‘ari considered it to have existence, so did not attribute it to them. However, according to Ash‘ari, the power of disposal within inclination is a theoretical matter, which makes the inclination and the disposal together a relative matter lacking a definite external existence. Theoretical or relative matters do not require causes through which, for their existence, necessity would intervene and nullify the will and power of choice. Rather, if the cause of the theoretical matters acquires the weight of preference, the theoretical matter may become actual and existent. In which case, at that juncture, it may be abandoned. The Quran may say to a person at that point: “This is evil; do not do it.” Indeed, if God’s servants had been the creators of their actions and had had the power to create, then their wills would have been removed. For an established rule in the sciences of religion and philosophy is: “If a thing is not necessary, it may not come into existence [of itself ].” That is, there has to be a cause for a thing to come into existence. The cause necessarily requires the effect. Then no power of choice would remain.28

Like theologians before him, Nursi had no option but to identify the component in man which, in order to make him truly accountable before God for his deeds, can be said in a meaningful sense to actually belong to man himself, but without violating the principle of absolute Divine power or ownership. Although he does not state it openly here, it is evident from Nursi’s other writings that he appears to favour the solution offered by Maturidi over that posited by Ash’ari, although the reason for his preference is unclear.29 For Maturidi, inclination (mayalān), the phenomenon which drives human choice, is a subjective (i‘tibārī) issue: it is a mental entity that has no instantiation in the external world. And since it is a subjective consideration that has no concrete existence, it can be attributed quite safely to man without violating the principle of absolute Divine sovereignty. However, Ash’ari, it seems, disagreed with Maturidi and claimed that inclination was created and therefore could not be attributed to man. What may be said to belong to man, Ash’ari suggested, was not inclination itself but rather the power of disposal (tas.arruf) that man exercises over it. Rather puzzlingly, Ash’ari then declares – with Nursi’s apparent approval – that inclination and the power of disposal together constitute a mental entity that has no external existence and which can therefore be attributed to man. Precisely why Ash’ari believes inclination to be a created matter when it stands alone but a mental entity when considered in conjunction with the ‘power of disposal’ is difficult to explain, and Nursi himself sheds no light on this apparent anomaly. Ultimately, however, it makes little difference whether the mental entity attributable to man is inclination, the power of disposal, or inclination and the power of disposal combined.

379

The Qur’an Revealed  Whatever that mental entity actually is, the important thing is that it is a mental entity. It is important because, as Nursi explains, it does not have external existence and therefore is not created or caused by God. If it were created by God, Nursi argues, it would be an effect like other effects: its existence would become necessitated by Divine will and therefore it could be not be attributed to man himself. Given this, it would be impossible to say that man had freedom of choice in any meaningful sense of the phrase. Man would be similarly robbed of his freedom to choose his actions if he were actually the real creator of them, for according to the principle which holds that only things which are ontologically necessary may come into existence, any act that man created would come into being of necessity rather than as a result of free choice. Donning the garb of Devil’s advocate, Nursi then forces the reader to unpack the notion of what basically amounts to ‘uncaused preference’ more carefully. Yet you may say: preference without a cause or attribute to cause the preference is impossible. But the theoretical or relative matter we call human acquisition (kasb) sometimes does a thing and sometimes does not. Now if there is nothing to cause the preference, this would constitute an instance of preference without something to cause it. Does this not demolish one of the most important foundations of theology? 30

There is an established theological principle which has it that ‘preference without a determinant to prefer it is impossible’ (tarjīh.  bilā murajjih muh. āl). According to this principle, every created being which enters the realm of external existence is said to be mumkin al-wujūd – a phrase which means ‘something whose existence is possible’, but which is usually translated in theological texts as ‘contingent’. In other words, existence and non-existence are equal possibilities for that being: there is nothing in the essence or nature of the thing itself which necessitates either its coming into existence or its remaining non-existent. The fact that it has come into existence shows that there must be a determinant (murajjih) external to that thing which tilts the balance in favour of existence and thus causes that thing to come into being; without such a determinant to ‘prefer’ its existence over its non-existence, the thing would remain forever non-existent. That determinant is none other than the wājib al-wujūd – a theological term meaning ‘something whose existence is self-necessitated’ and which is used to describe God. It is God Who, by ‘preferring’ the existence of a thing rather than its non-existence, causes it to come into being. What, then, is the status of that faculty within man which facilitates his ‘acquisition’ (kasb) of those actions for which he is ultimately responsible before God? The answer is this: preference without a cause or attribute to cause the preference is impossible. That is, a being deemed preferable or superior without a cause or attribute to make it so is impossible. But preference without something to cause it is permissible and occurs. Will is an attribute, and its mark is to perform a work such as that.31

Nursi agrees that beings in the external realm owe the fact that they exist to a preponderating factor – i.e. God – which has ‘preferred’ their existence over their non-existence. Human free will, however, is different. The power of disposal (tas.arruf) that man has over his inclination (mayalān) may lead him to do one thing today but to refrain from doing the same thing

380

  On Divine Determining and Freewill tomorrow. In other words, his choosing to do this or that is not ontologically necessary: he may choose to do it or he may choose not to do it. It may be argued, of course, that since human free will is circumscribed by a whole host of extraneous factors such as upbringing, force of habit, environmental context, addiction, weakness of will and so on, it is free only in a nominal sense. For example, how free am I when I choose the apple that is offered to me rather than the orange, if I have a natural aversion to oranges? How free is the heroin addict not to choose to smoke heroin if he is heavily addicted and suffering from withdrawal symptoms? The exercise of our free will in making everyday choices is indeed often influenced heavily by force of circumstance. However, it is never nullified: so long as there is more than one path to take, choice exists and human will is completely free to make that choice. My natural aversion to oranges may make it difficult for me to choose the orange, but it cannot compel me to choose the apple. That we are not actually compelled by any extraneous factor to prefer A over B, or vice versa, becomes much easier to understand when it comes to the issue of choosing between two things which are, superficially at least, indistinguishable one from the other. Imagine, for instance, that there are two ten-dollar notes – for all intents and purposes identical – on the table, and that John is asked to choose one of them. Bearing in mind that there is nothing that John can see which would allow him to distinguish between them, and in the absence of any external factor which would make note A preferable to note B – such as some strange aversion to things which are on the left rather than on the right, for example - what would his choice be? The answer is that that his choice would be free, whichever note he eventually decided to take. For if choice were compelled, either causally or logically, then when faced with circumstances of equally balanced desires or reasons, such as the case of the two identical tendollar notes, it follows that his will would be in effect paralysed in what some philosophers have termed a ‘necessity of indifference’.32 To illustrate what is meant by the ‘paralysis’ of will in such a situation, we can look to Ghazali for help. In his Incoherence of The Philosophers, in which he takes the Muslim philosophers to task for the pre-eminence they give to the power of human reason, he discusses the nature of man’s will. The philosophers, he claims, are of the view that man’s will is, and must be, compelled by reasons, be they causal or logical. Ghazali disagrees. Human will, he says, should not be thought of as being compelled by reasons. For if this were the case, and a person were asked to choose between two dates, equally appealing, equally near and equally easy to take, his will would be paralysed, for there would be no reason to take one rather than the other. Of course, situations of perfect equality like this rarely arise, but this does not mean that we are unable to assume equal reasons. And if there are equal reasons, then the will must, if the philosophers are right, be paralysed and unable to choose.33 However, it is self-evident that the will of a person in such circumstances would not be paralysed and that he would in fact be able to choose one of the two dates. It follows on, then, says Ghazali, that will is not determined by reasons and is thus free.34 Furthermore, that man’s will should be free is a logical corollary of his ability, as the locus par excellence of Divine manifestation, to reflect all of God’s names. One of those names is Possessor of Free Will (murīd or mukhtār); is it so surprising, then, that man should be able to reflect that attribute in some way? Nursi, one assumes, would agree that it is not.

381

The Qur’an Revealed  John’s choice of either ten-dollar note A or ten-dollar note B is, then, a free choice. If we change the example and ask him to choose between a righteous action and an unrighteous action, although the circumstances and possible repercussions will change, and while his ability to choose may be made more difficult by certain external factors, the fact remains that the power of disposal that he exercises over his inclination to do one thing rather than the other is his and his alone. For were his choice necessitated by God, it would no longer be his choice and he would no longer be accountable. Man is, therefore, absolutely free to choose between two alternative paths, and it is this very freedom which makes him accountable for the outcomes of his choice – outcomes that are said to be his by ‘acquisition’ (kasb) rather than by creation, which is the domain of God. It is to Nursi’s more detailed treatment of kasb that we now turn.

On Divine Determining and ‘acquisition’ (kasb)

If God is omnipotent and, as the Quran says, the Creator of all things, including human actions, the notion that man will be held to account for what he does appears at first glance highly problematic. For example, if murder is created by God, one may ask, why are men called murderers? The short answer to the question is this: while God does indeed create all things, including human actions, man is responsible for that which he ‘acquires’ by virtue of his choosing to do one thing rather than another. The theory of ‘acquisition’ (kasb, or, sometimes, iktisāb) was devised by Ash’arite theologians as a compromise position, allowing God to remain as sole creator of all things but finding at the same time a place for man’s exercise of his free will and, as a consequence, his accountability before God for any acts of evil that he commits. By way of an introduction to his approach to the notion of acquisition, let us first examine how Nursi answers the question posed above. If you were to say “Since the one who creates the murder is Almighty God, why do you call me a murderer?”, I would respond as follows. According to the rules of grammar, the active participle (ism al-fā‘il) is derived from the mas.dar (verbal noun or infinitive), which is a relative matter. It cannot be derived from the outcome (h. ās.il) of a verbal noun, which is an actual or existent matter. The verbal noun is what man ‘acquires’, and hence it is he who is called the murderer. The outcome of a verbal noun is Almighty God’s creation. Something which gives an inkling of responsibility cannot be derived from the outcome of a verbal noun.35

Nursi employs a wide variety of arguments in his theological discussions, including the occasional appeal to linguistic structure. According to the principles of Arabic grammar and syntax, an active participle may be derived from a verbal noun or infinitive (mas.dar) but not from its outcome (h. ās.il bi’l mas.dar). Death, for example, is the outcome of murder (qatl), but no active participle may be derived from it. Because death is something fixed, created and concrete, its existence is attributable directly to God. Murder, on the other hand, is subjective and, since an active participle – qātil, or murderer – is derivable from it, is attributed to the perpetrator. Man cannot be the creator of death – for only God can create that which has external existence – but he can, by virtue of the derivability of an active

382

  On Divine Determining and Freewill participle from the verbal noun qatl ( murder), ‘acquire’ that verbal noun and thus be called a murderer. God, however, is the creator of death but not of murder, which is a subjective issue that has no external existence. The original question posed above - “Since the one who creates the murder is Almighty God, why do you call me a murderer?” – is thus seen to be highly misleading, based as it is on a false premise. One wonders whether this was a slip of the pen on Nursi’s part or whether he was, in playing Devil’s advocate, trying to reflect the genuine confusion that people encounter when it comes to distinguishing between the objective and the subjective, or between that which is logically attributable to God and that which may be said to emanate from man’s exercise of his free-will. Murder has no real existence and thus cannot be ‘created’, although it can, for reasons outlined above, be ‘acquired’ by man. But if we were to rephrase the question and ask “Since the one who creates death is Almighty God, why do you call me a murderer”, the answer would present itself immediately. However, Nursi, although clearly aware that the premise upon which the question is based lacks validity, gives the questioner the benefit of the doubt and eschews a direct attack on his faulty reasoning, electing instead to clarify the issue by means of a measured and compelling appeal to the internal logic of Arabic grammar. What Nursi is saying here cannot be clearer: man cannot create death – for only God creates – but he can be responsible for murder, which is a subjective act and, as such, unattributable to God. Murder is subjective because it is simply a label that is attached to a killing that is unlawful as opposed to one that is lawful. Death – the outcome of murder – is not the destructive element here; that which is destructive is man’s use of his inclination (mayalān) in order to choose to kill unlawfully. And, as Nursi explains, it is this misguided use of his free-will which makes him ultimately responsible before God – responsible not for the death of his victim but for his murder. Yes, as the Quran states, man is totally responsible for his evils, for it is he who wants the evils. Since evils are destructive, man may perpetrate much destruction with a single evil act, like burning down a house with one match, and he becomes deserving of an awesome punishment. However, he does not have the right to take pride in good deeds; his part in them is extremely small. For what wants and requires the good deeds is Divine mercy, and what creates them is dominical power. Both request and reply, reason and cause, are from God. Man only comes to have them through supplication, belief, consciousness and consent. As for evils, it is man’s soul that wants them, either through capacity or through choice, -like in the white and beautiful light of the sun some substances become black and putrefy, and the blackness is related to their capacity-however, it is Almighty God Who creates the evils through a Divine law which comprises numerous benefits. That is to say, the cause and the request are from the soul, so that it is the soul which is responsible, while it is Almighty God Who brings the results of those requests into existence, and since they have other consequences and fruits which are good, they too are good. It is for the above reason that the ‘acquisition’ (kasb) of evil, that is, the desire for evil, is evil, but the creation of evil is not. A lazy man who receives damage from rain, which comprises many instances of good, may not say that the rain is not mercy. Yes, together with a minor evil in its creation are numerous instances of good. To abandon that good for a minor evil becomes a greater evil. Therefore, a minor evil becomes like

383

The Qur’an Revealed  good. There is no evil or ugliness in Divine creation. They rather pertain to His servant’s wish and to his capacity.36

In the above passage Nursi draws clear lines of demarcation between the sphere in which man operates and that over which God governs. Man can create nothing, be it good or apparently evil; this much Nursi has already established in his discourse on causation in Chapter Three. All that exists in creation is good, and all that is good is created by God: man achieves the good not through creating it but through belief and supplication, both active and verbal.37 Good, therefore, is the default setting in the creation: man cannot do good; he can only choose not to do bad. In fact, as far as Nursi is concerned, man cannot do bad either, but he can desire it. If his soul inclines far enough towards evil, God will – if He so decrees - create the outcome of that desire. Man proposes and God disposes; man desires evil and God creates the determined outcome of that desire. It is at this point in Nursi’s exposition that we have to take exception to some of his phraseology. Despite the fact that he says in at least two places in this passage that God creates ‘evil’, there is actually no such thing as the ‘creation’ of evil, for evil is a lack: the absence of a thing, cannot, since it has no external existence, be brought into being. What Nursi is trying to say – and it is with regard to the subject of theodicy arguably more than with any other religious discourse that our poverty of language as human beings trying to grapple with the non-rational becomes evident – is that the bringing into existence of the result of an evil intention is, in itself, not evil. The fact that he himself ends the passage by saying that there is ‘no evil or ugliness in Divine creation’ should be enough to convince the reader that his earlier linguistic infelicities were simply the result of an attempt to express an extremely complex theological subject in terms that would be comprehensible to as wide and intellectually varied an audience as possible. Man, then, desires evil and God, for his part, creates the outcome of that desire. Yet the outcome of that desire, as created by God, is good, even though man may receive punishment as a result of his desire. At first glance it appears to make little sense, but it is not the paradox it seems. For example, if, on account of enmity, a man inserts a knife into another man’s heart and kills him, he is called a murderer. However, a man who inserts a knife into another man’s heart in order to excise a diseased valve or to perform a transplant is called a surgeon. While the actions of both men may be identical, the intentions are clearly poles apart: the insertion of a knife in order to kill is deemed evil on account not of the act itself but of the intention. While the act of the murderer may appear evil, the actual consequence of his intention is not actually murder but death. And death, since it is created directly by God, cannot be attributed to the murderer, as Nursi’s earlier linguistic excursus demonstrated. The man who plunges a knife into his neighbour’s heart in order to kill him is guilty not of the death of the man, but of his murder. This is no sophism, despite appearances to the contrary. Another example is that of one man who has intercourse with his wife and another man who has intercourse with a woman to whom he is not married. The act – sexual intercourse – is the same in both cases. However, one man is acting within his legal rights while the other is guilty of adultery: what he is accountable for is not the act of sex but the intention to have

384

  On Divine Determining and Freewill illicit intercourse, and the will – or inclination – exercised which leads to the result of his intention being brought into existence. Thus man is accountable before God on account of his desire for evil; he is held responsible because of his asking God to create in response to his desire those things of which God does not approve. That which is evil, therefore, is not the creation of the outcome of misguided desire, but misguided desire itself. Furthermore, Divine Determining is both exempt from evil and ugliness with regard to results and fruits, and free from tyranny and ugliness with respect to reason and cause. Because Divine Determining looks to the true causes and acts justly. Men construct their judgements on causes which they see superficially and fall into error within the pure justice of Divine Determining. For example, a judge finds you guilty of theft and sends you to prison. You are not a thief, but you have committed a murder which no one knows about. Thus, Divine Determining also sentenced you to imprisonment, but it sentenced you for the secret murder and acted justly. Since the judge sentenced you for a theft of which you were innocent, he acted unjustly. Thus, in a single thing the justice of Divine Determining and Divine creation and man’s wrongful choice or acquisition were apparent in two respects; you can make analogies with this for other things. That is to say, with regard to origin and end, source and branch, cause and results, Divine Determining and creation are exempt from evil, ugliness and tyranny.38

Absolute justice is, by Nursi’s own admission, not something which exists in this world; relative justice, however, does obtain, although we cannot always see or fathom it. His example is instructive. If a man is sent to prison for a theft he has not committed, we may say that the judge who sentences him has acted unjustly. However, it may well be that from the viewpoint of Divine Determining, the man’s imprisonment is actually punishment for a crime that no-one but he himself knows he has committed. While Nursi’s exposition of the justice underlying Divine Determining which we often overlook because of our tendency to see only the superficial is interesting, not least because it helps us to understand that there is some method to what often appears to be Divine madness, it must nevertheless be approached with caution. Nursi’s example of the man treated unjustly by the judge but justly by God is only an example, and should not be used to make generalizations. We cannot jump to definite conclusions about people who have been imprisoned unjustly or, for example, a frail old lady who is beaten up by a thief for the sake of the contents of her purse. With regard to the latter example, we cannot conclude that the victim of the beating actually got what she deserved because of some crime she committed in the past that is unknown to us. For the wisdom behind anyone’s receiving what appears to be unjust treatment may pertain not only to past misdemeanours that are hidden to all but the person himself, but also to the requirements of the Divine test. For example, the prophets, as Nursi tells us, were the most afflicted of men, but it would be wrong to assume in their case that the trials and tribulations they underwent happened in order that they might expiate some monstrous past misdemeanours. Nursi himself was poisoned more than a dozen times, imprisoned on numerous occasions and spent many years in exile or under house arrest. While there was, indeed, Divine justice at work beneath the surface, it would be inappropriate - to say the least - were we to conclude

385

The Qur’an Revealed  that while he was treated unjustly by his oppressors, the treatment he received at their hands was in reality the result of some past transgression – and transgression apparently so heinous that for many years of his life he was forced to languish in solitary confinement under the most taxing conditions. We cannot conclude that anyone’s ‘unjust’ punishment is actually proportionate to some ‘real’ crime: if such a thing were possible, how would we appraise the trials of Job, who was arguably the most afflicted individual in prophetic history?. Of course, what appears to be tribulation for one person may be of little consequence to another, and maybe therein lies the key. Proportionate or disproportionate punishment is, again, in the eye of the beholder. What Nursi is trying to say, one may assume, is firstly that no act of injustice perpetrated by humankind is exempt from Divine Determining, and secondly that there is a Divine wisdom which underpins it. Whether that injustice is in reality a punishment for hidden crimes or simply a means of Divine trial is surely not for us to judge. Nursi then turns to the question of the apparent disproportionateness which exists between the shadowy, insubstantial phenomenon known as free will, which can create nothing, and the enormity of the crimes that man is somehow able to commit as a result of its misuse. One question that may be asked is as follows: “Man has no ability to create with his power of choice and has nothing apart from ‘acquisition,’ which is as though theoretical, so how is it that in the Quran of Miraculous Exposition he is shown to be rebellious and hostile towards the Creator of the heavens and the earth, Who complains greatly about him; the Creator mobilizes Himself and all His angels to assist His believing servants against the rebellious, affording them the greatest importance?” In response, we would say that disbelief, rebellion and evil are destruction and non-existence. However, vast destruction and innumerable instances of non-existence may result from a single theoretical matter and one instance of non-existence. Through the helmsman of a large ship abandoning his duty, the ship may sink and the labour of all those employed on it go for nothing; all those instances of destruction will result from a single instance of non-existence. Similarly, since disbelief and rebellion are non-existence and destruction, the power of choice may provoke them through a theoretical matter and cause awesome consequences. For although disbelief is only one evil, it insults the whole universe, accusing it of being worthless and futile, and denies all beings, which display proofs of Divine unity, and is contemptuous towards all the manifestations of the Divine Names. It is therefore pure wisdom that Almighty God utters severe complaints about the unbelievers, threatening them awesomely in the name of the universe and all beings and the Divine Names; it is pure justice that they should suffer eternal punishment. Since through unbelief and rebellion man takes the way of destruction, with a small act of service, he may perform a great many works. In the face of unbelief therefore, the believers are in need of Almighty God’s boundless grace. For due to one troublesome child who is trying to burn down a house, ten strong men who have undertaken to protect and repair it may be obliged to beseech the child’s parents, or even have recourse to the king. In the same way the believers are in need of many Divine favours in order to withstand the unmannerly people of rebellion.39

386

  On Divine Determining and Freewill Man’s free will – which is in fact limited to the choice between doing evil and not doing evil – may well be unable to create anything, but through its inclination towards that which is forbidden, it is able to wreak devastation. For in choosing to incline towards disbelief, rebellion and that which has been forbidden, he is choosing non-existence. Evil is simply the lack of good, which is, as we have seen from Nursi’s discourse, the default setting of creation. To desire the lack of good is to desire evil, and while evil has no external existence and therefore cannot be attributed to God, man’s desire for it may, depending on the circumstances, result in outcomes which are evil not in their creation but in the intention of the one who has desired them. Nursi often gives the example of the building which has taken years to build, but which is razed to the ground within minutes on account of a single evil-intentioned man with a box of matches. While the creation of the fire and the burning of the building are from God, the desire for non-existence, for the lack of good, is from the man with the match. It is thus unregenerate man’s seemingly endless capacity for evil that brings upon his head so many Divine warnings and threats of dire punishment. Nursi’s final point regarding acquisition in general, and the relationship between human will and Divine will in particular, is an affirmation of the fact that God’s universal will is, in one sense, connected inextricably with the will of man. Finally, although man’s faculty of will and power of choice are weak and a theoretical matter, Almighty God, the Absolutely Wise One, made that weak and partial will a condition for the connection of His universal will. He in effect says: “My servant! Whichever way you wish to take with your will, I will take you there. In which case the responsibility is yours!” If the comparison is not mistaken, you take a powerless child onto your shoulders and, leaving the choice to him, tell him you will take him wherever he wishes. The child wants to go to a high mountain so you take him there, but he either catches cold or falls. So of course you reprimand him, saying, “You wanted to go there,” and you give him a slap. Thus, Almighty God, the Firmest of Judges, makes His servant’s will, which is utterly weak, a condition, and His universal will follows it.40

Although man’s free-will – or his disposal of that will – has no external existence, it is nevertheless a condition, Nursi says, for the connection of human choice to Divine action. If it is true that Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit – Man proposes, but God disposes - then from one perspective it would appear that God’s decree to create a particular action is issued only after man has voiced his preference, through free disposal of his will, for the act to take place. Nursi compares man’s request for God to create something for him to the demands of child sitting on his father’s shoulders: if the child says, ‘Turn left’, the father turns left; if it says, ‘Turn right’, the father turns right. As the father’s actions follow the child’s demands, so God’s universal will follows man’s exercise of his free choice. What Nursi does not broach here is the issue of demands which are not met. For while man may indeed be a child on the shoulders of God, man’s partial will is not always a condition for His universal will: God does not always take man where he wants. Sometimes, man inclines towards a thing but does not reach his goal; or he inclines towards one thing but reaches another thing entirely. Surely this is why it is enjoined upon believers to say Inshallah - ‘If God wills’ - when talking about the possible outcome of an act that has emanated from their power to choose?

387

The Qur’an Revealed  It may be that Nursi is talking about the general run of events as we perceive them; after all, for the most part, the things man asks for as a ‘child on the shoulders of God’, he receives. However, while it is true that ‘man proposes and God disposes’, I as an individual am not the only proposer in the universe: everyone with whom I have contact, and whose life trajectories intersect with mine, are disposers of their own free will, and it often happens that I do not get what I ask for because someone has exercised disposal of their free will in a way that is more conducive to success than mine. Naturally, we are talking now of practical examples of desires that have tangible, thisworldly outcomes. Call on Me and I shall answer you is, according to the Quran, what God promises.41 But this does not mean that we have carte blanche to see all our desires – material and supra-material – fulfilled as and when we wish. For the most part, our workaday requests – those material requests made by inclining to one action or another-are responded to in a tangible, fathomable manner. We choose to make a cup of tea and usually find that our arms and legs are carrying us towards the kettle. Yet it is only the choice that is ours: the creation of the results of that choice is from God; we are, after all, described by Nursi as children perched on God’s shoulders. Supra-material requests – requests for guidance, patience, good health, wisdom, the happiness of one’s children – are always responded to, although not necessarily in ways that we expect. God does answer prayer, but on His terms rather than ours. When things do not work out in accordance with our inclination, the reasons for this may be manifold. While most of what we ask for – since it is generally mundane – is granted to us, on occasion we hit a brick wall. The fact that God prevents us from doing some things may be construed as a kind of breach in the general principle that Nursi outlines, namely that God will take us where we ask him. However, as we have seen, we must also bear in mind that we are not the only possessors of will in the creation and that the needs of others need to be fulfilled. Furthermore, we may be asking for the wrong thing, in which case God – out of his grace – may prevent us from achieving it. And even if it is not the wrong thing, His preventing us from achieving it may be in order to test our patience. But why does God prevent some of us from doing that which is not in our interests while allowing others to do things which are clearly to their detriment? The notion that the exercise of our free will may not culminate in the outcomes that we expect suggests that it is really not a question of ‘Man proposes and God disposes’ in the absolute sense of the term. The fact that our free choice is not always created into the kind of outcome we expect would tend to suggest one of two possibilities: (a) whatever we desire makes no difference because God will do as he likes anyway; or (b) that when we desire a particular outcome, it comes into fruition only if it happens to coincide with God’s universal will. It should be self-evident that possibility (a) does not afford a rational solution: as we have seen, much of what we desire in the material sense – in the causal realm - through the free disposal of our power of choice does actually come to fruition. As for possibility (b), the notion that our outcomes are translated into fruition only when they ‘happen’ to concur with qadar would actually entail a disjunction between man’s ikhtiyar and God’s universal will, suggesting, in the manner of the Jabriyya, that however we dispose of our ability to choose, God will do what He wills in any case, thus completely devaluing, by virtue of its sheer arbitrariness, any merit that might have accrued as a result of our choosing the right thing.

388

  On Divine Determining and Freewill Why, then, does the child on the shoulders of God not always get taken in the direction he specifies?

The role of supplication in Divine Determining

One factor that we have not considered in this equation is the role of supplication (du‘ā), which, if considered carefully, may be seen as the key to understanding the role of man’s free will in the general process of qadar. Were it not for supplication, the Quran says, God would pay no attention to man at all: Say : My Lord would not concern Himself with you but for your prayer (du‘ā).42

The central role played in the life of man – and thus, by extension, in what is ‘determined’ for him – by supplication is highlighted in numerous verses of the Quran: And when My servants ask you, [O Muhammad], concerning Me - indeed I am near. I respond to the invocation (du‘ā) of the supplicant when he calls upon Me. So let them respond to Me [by obedience] and believe in Me that they may be [rightly] guided.43 And your Lord says, “Call upon Me; I will respond to you.” Indeed, those who disdain My worship will enter Hell [rendered] contemptible.44 [ God ] said, “ Your supplication has been answered. So remain on a right course and follow not the way of those who do not know.” 45

According to Nursi, good deeds are the creation of ‘dominical power’, and man comes to have them only ‘through supplication (du‘ā), belief, consciousness and consent’. Since good is what exists by default, man can attain it only by refusing to incline towards its absence, towards what is bad. When he inclines towards that which is forbidden with his insubstantial will, which is a subjective entity with no external existence, God creates the outcomes of his misguided desire and man ‘acquires’ them. Thus whatever man does is, in fact, the outcome of supplication: be it for good or for evil, he has no option but to invoke God in order that his desire be given external existence and translated into an outcome. In other words, man can have nothing, be nothing and do nothing unless he invokes God for it, whether that invocation happens metaphorically, through the physical movement of his limbs in order to act, or whether it happens literally, through verbal supplication. The key to man’s disposal of his power of choice, then, is supplication, be it for the good or the bad: And man supplicates for evil as he supplicates for good, and man is ever hasty.46

Can that which is ‘written’ be ‘unwritten’?

In Quranic – and, indeed, in Nursian –terms, then, every act of will is in fact a supplication. And according to the Quran, all supplications are answered. And the fact that God says that he answers prayers also suggests that what has been ‘written’ can in fact be changed. That what God has determined for man can be changed is both alluded to in the Quran and confirmed by Prophetic Tradition. Nursi discusses the issue in the context of

389

The Qur’an Revealed  certain predictions made by saintly individuals which did not come to pass, leading others to think that those predictions were baseless. Some people asked me: why do saints and men of illumination make predictions that are contrary to reality? The reply which I was inspired to give them was this: It is said in a Prophetic Tradition: “Sometimes a calamity is visited on a person, but it is confronted with alms-giving, and is repelled.” The underlying meaning of this Tradition shows that while it is determined that appointed events come to pass if certain conditions obtain, they do not occur. That is to say, the appointed events of which the people of illumination are aware are not absolute, but restricted by certain conditions; if the conditions are not present, the event does not occur. However the event, like the appointed hour of death, which is suspended, is written and determined in the ‘Tablet of Appearance and Dissolution’ (lawh. -i mah. w wa ithbāt) which is a sort of notebook of the Pre-Eternal Tablet. It is only extremely rarely that illuminations penetrate as far as the Pre-Eternal Tablet; mostly they cannot rise that far. As a consequence of this, predictions made as a result of interpretations or illuminations that do not occur because the conditions on which they were dependent were not fulfilled, do not give the lie to those who predicted them. They were indeed determined, but did not come about because the conditions were not fulfilled.47

The ‘Tablet of Appearance and Dissolution’ (lawh. -i mah. w wa ithbāt), rendered on occasion by Nursi’s translator as the ‘Tablet of Effacement and Reaffirmation’, is, according to Nursi, the ‘metaphorical page’ on which events entering the time-bound realm of creation are written and then erased. By means of the dictation of the Clear Record, that is, through the decree and instruction of Divine Determining, Divine Power is creating the chain of beings, each link of which is a sign in the creation of things. It is causing the motion of particles, it is writing on the metaphorical page of time, which is called the Tablet of Effacement and Reaffirmation. Thus, the motion of particles is the vibration and motion from that writing and transcription, which occurs while beings pass from the World of the Unseen to the Manifest World, as they pass from knowledge to power. And as for the Tablet of Effacement and Reaffirmation, it is a slate for writing and erasing, an ever-changing notebook of the Supreme Preserved Tablet, which is fixed and constant. It is its notebook in the sphere of contingency, where all things are unceasing manifestations of life and death, existence and ephemerality. And this is the reality of time. Indeed, what we call time, which is a mighty river flowing in creation, has a reality like everything else. Its reality is like the ink and the page of the writing of Power in the Tablet of Effacement and Reaffirmation.48

Extrapolating from Nursi’s description of how beings are brought into external existence by Divine Power in accordance with the dictates of that particular facet of qadar known as the ‘Clear Record’ (imām al-mubīn), and how they then become ‘written’ and ‘erased’ constantly and continuously on the metaphorical page of ‘Effacement and Reaffirmation’, we can perhaps begin to see more clearly the function of human will as a catalyst not only for the creation of the outcomes of its own desires, but also for the changing of what has ostensibly been ‘written’ for it. Let us follow Nursi’s example and allegorise in order to throw a little more light on what it is clearly an exceedingly complex issue.

390

  On Divine Determining and Freewill Imagine that X is at the centre of a vast circular labyrinth, with countless paths or corridors leading eventually to numberless exit points, each of them representing the outcome of a particular trajectory taken in life – the outcome being the status or degree that X will reach once he finally leaves the maze, i.e. when he dies. Now X is confined to a wheelchair and can navigate his way out of the labyrinth only with the help of his carer, who also gives him guidance regarding the best routes. He is told that there are positive outcomes and negative outcomes, but that if he pays heed to the guidance he is given, he will have nothing to fear: he is reassured constantly that all he has to do is to choose the path or corridor which matches the guidance he is given and he will be carried along in accordance with his choice. Yet although he is told which routes he should take, he sometimes refuses to listen to his guide’s advice and opts instead for a route of his own. Now that route is not outside the maze; in other words, X’s choice of a possibility other than the one suggested to him does not lie outwith the countless possibilities determined by the maker of the labyrinth. Every twist and turn that X makes will have a bearing on the direction he takes and the particular exit that he will eventually find. Sometimes he starts along a path and then decides to turn back and take another. He may realise that he is going along the wrong path and decide to take a safer one instead. For example, disregarding the advice of his guide, he begins to go down a particular path only to realise halfway that at the end of that there is a snake-filled pit, and that if he continues on this particular route, he will fall in and be bitten to death. In deciding to turn back and take another route, he is in effect changing what would have been a negative destiny for a positive one. His route may also be changed for reasons which pertain to deeds that he has done in the past. For example, he may choose to take a path which also leads to a dangerous, snake-filled pit, but this time he cannot see it because it is dark. However, on account of some kind deeds he has done in the past – maybe he has helped someone on the way, or expressed gratitude to his carer for carrying him – he is turned back just before he reaches the pit and thus the potential calamity is averted. Naturally, since he has not perceived the danger personally, he may wonder why he was unable to complete the path he had chosen, and indeed may complain that his desire for that particular route has not been acted upon. To him, the unexpected change of route may even appear unjust, even though in reality the re-direction was effected in order for him to avoid something that he would have found much more distressing than the apparent stymieing of his will. He may set his heart on taking a particular path, and may even have been recommended to do so by his guide, only to find after deciding to take it that the path is blocked. Again, at first glance it may appear that his will has been ignored and his power of choice rendered redundant. However, the fact that he is unable to proceed on the path has no bearing on his ability to choose that path. To be able to proceed along the path, certain conditions beyond his control need to be fulfilled: if those conditions do not obtain, he will not be able to pass, however ardently he may desire to do so. Another example may help to clarify the issue. Imagine that a drinks machine which dispenses coffee, tea and hot chocolate has been filled by mistake with coffee only. My choice is for tea, but when I press the button, a cup of coffee is dispensed. I then choose hot chocolate, but again receive coffee. However frustrating the

391

The Qur’an Revealed  inability to reach my intended goal may be, it does not detract from the fact that my initial choice was a completely free one. Like all allegories, this is less than perfect and obviously goes only so far in trying to express what is on so many levels virtually inexpressible. Hopefully what it does serve to illustrate is the fact that changes to our situation - whether effected explicitly by our own recognition that change needs to be made, or whether determined by factors such as invocation or the giving of alms, as in the Prophetic Tradition – are not instances of God’s ‘changing his mind’ or altering in some way His universal will, which is reflected in that facet of His knowledge which Nursi identifies as the ‘eternal tablet’. In other words, the fact that there is going to be a particular exit from the ‘labyrinth’ that is reached from a particular route is known ‘pre-eternally’, as we have seen in Nursi’s example of the vast mirror which holds in it the pictures of the past, present and future all at once. God – the creator of the labyrinth – sees the path we take through the vast maze from above, while we see only the particular path we happen to be on right now. Moreover, God also sees every twist and turn that we take and every instance of backtracking that occurs. Sometimes, if we ask for guidance, He may take us to a place that we might never have thought of; again, this is within His universal will, and while it appears that He has changed qadar, it is actually no different from his creating for us any other path that we happen to choose. In other words, when we choose a particular path, He makes it possible for us to take it. In the same way, if we ask Him for guidance and to take us out of error, He will take us and lead us in the direction of a better path. This is an example of His changing our path, but not His universal will. His universal will is such that all of the possible paths in the labyrinth lead to dedicated outcomes with particular results, and if man chooses to take a path, that is the path he will follow unless circumstances beyond his control – such as the failure to come together of sufficient causes – force him to turn back, or unless his supplication or his giving of alms lead to God’s turning to man and taking him from a potentially perilous path to a safer one. This may well appear to be a breach or rupture in Divine will, or a change in Divine knowledge, but we have to bear in mind that we are seeing it from our perspective. Eventually we will reach an outcome, and that outcome is known pre-eternally – timelessly – by God. In the same way, He knows every change that occurs in the labyrinth – which is, after all, a ‘tablet of effacing and reaffirming’ where things which appear to have been ‘written’ may never come to pass, or where things which have actually been written may be erased. The fact that routes may be changed does not mean that the immutability of God’s universal will is violated, for all possible route changes lie within that will. The eventual outcome, and the route taken to reach it, with all its twists and turns, with all its backtracking and acts of Divine grace which occur in response to supplication and the giving of alms – all of these are within God’s universal will: they are all ‘possibles’ which have actually been translated into reality. It would appear then that man has a part in the formation of his own future, through the way he disposes of his inclination and also through his supplication. Precisely how this works is difficult to gauge, and speculation on the processes involved is beyond the remit of this chapter. What is sure, as far as we can understand from both the Quran and from Nursi on the subject of human free will, is that our choices are not subject to compulsion.

392

  On Divine Determining and Freewill What is ‘written’ for us will occur, but what is ‘written’ for us includes the free choices that we make and the supplications that exert their own effects on our futures. And even if this were not the case, and man could not help but do what was ‘written’ for him, this would not change the fact that his will is free. The point is to want what is right, and man has absolute freedom to choose that which is right: whether or not the outcome accords with his request is ultimately of no consequence, and in no way violates the principle of free choice. To want one thing but to receive another does not invalidate one’s ability to want, and it is man’s ability to want the right rather than the wrong which makes him ultimately accountable.

Divine Determining: a fundamental of belief?

According to the Quran, righteousness consists, inter alia, of belief in five things: God; the angels; the revealed scriptures; the prophets; and the Hereafter; nowhere in the Quran does belief in Divine Determining appear in any list of ‘articles of faith’. Nevertheless, owing to the mention of qadar in a Prophetic Tradition as the sixth principle of faith, most Muslims accord it the same status as the other five principles, and in general, ‘belief in Divine Determining, be it for the good or the bad’, is seen as part of the Muslim ‘creed’ or aqīda.49 While the Quran does not posit qadar as an article of faith explicitly, it does contain a vast number verses which may be interpreted without much effort as being in full accord with the notion of Divine Determining as put forward by Nursi. These verses, which are too many to enumerate here, affirm not only the absolute sovereignty of God over all things, including human actions and human belief, but also the free-will of man and the fact that his power to choose between good and bad renders him responsible before God. While ‘predestinarians’ such as the Jabriyya have used one group of verses to defend their position, and ‘libertarians’ such as the Mu’tazilites have used another group to defend theirs, the fact that it emphasises both Divine omnipotence and human free-will would seem to suggest that the Quran is innately compatibilist in its approach and cannot logically be made to serve this or that ideological extreme. Given the Quran’s compatibilism, and bearing in mind the repercussions that not having belief in God’s absolute sovereignty and the existence of human free-will would have, it may be argued that to see qadar as an article of faith is unavoidable, whether or not it is specified explicitly as such by the Quran. But for Nursi, qadar is not just an article of faith; for him, qadar represents, if comprehended properly, the very pinnacle of belief and submission. Divine Determining and the power of choice are at the final degrees of belief and submission. As such, they are matters apprehended by a believer’s conscience and inner vision; they are not theoretical matters and do not pertain to knowledge. To believe in Divine Determining is to attribute everything to Almighty God, including one’s own self and its actions; to believe in the power of choice is to be fully aware that he cannot escape his obligation and responsibility. Divine Determining is also there to prevent him from becoming proud of his good deeds and achievements; it confronts him, saying: “Know your limits: the one who does them is not you.” Divine Determining has been included among the matters of belief to save the soul from pride, while the power of choice exists in order to make the soul admit its responsibility.50

393

The Qur’an Revealed  Divine determining and free-will are, as Nursi suggests, non-rational matters which are apprehended not by the clinical calculation of reason, but by man’s conscience, heart and inner vision. For example it is impossible to prove, scientifically, the existence of human free will; nevertheless, every one of us clearly feels that we have a certain kind of sovereignty which allows us complete freedom of choice: we may incline towards something or we may not; we may choose to act or we may choose not to act, and so on. Conscience tells us clearly that even in circumstances in which all prerequisites and conditions of a voluntary act exist, it is not necessary to act. In short, the fact that our choices are not in essence necessitated by anything other than our own power of disposal over them is something which we know intuitively. Knowing that we are free in our choices is one thing, but reconciling it with Divine omniscience and omnipotence, and the particular manifestation of these attributes in the form of Divine Determining, is another thing entirely. Indeed, the complexities involved in squaring successfully the notion of human free will with the idea that all things are ‘determined’ by God by virtue of qadar are what make belief in this particular ‘article of faith’ so difficult for many, which is why Nursi describes it as being one of the ‘final degrees of belief and submission’. Once believed in, however, and believed in with true conviction, Divine Determining and the power of choice are for Nursi the precursors of true spiritual edification and progress for the one who believes: If the one who speaks of Divine Determining and the power of choice has perfect belief and is aware of the Divine presence, he attributes the universe and himself to Almighty God, knowing them to be under His disposal. He has the right to speak of them. For since he knows himself and everything to be from Almighty God, he assumes responsibility for his actions, basing it on his power of choice. He accepts that it is the source of evils and proclaims his Sustainer free of fault. He remains within the sphere of worship and undertakes the obligations with which he is charged by Almighty God. Moreover, he does not become proud at his good deeds and achievements; he rather looks to Divine Determining and offers thanks. He sees Divine Determining in the calamities that befall him, and endures them in patience.51

Those who understand qadar and ikhtiyār, then, and who are able to internalise and embrace it as part of their faith, reap considerable benefits as a result. Anything good that he does will not engender pride because he realises that good is the default setting in creation, and that if good appears to have emanated from him, it is only because he has chosen not to do bad. And if he does choose to do bad, he will readily accept that he must be responsible for it in the end. Similarly, if apparently bad things happen to him, he will see the hand of Divine Determining in them and, satisfied in his own mind that there is wisdom in affliction, he will accept them with patience and good grace. Those who understand qadar and ikhtiyār less than perfectly, however, will not be so fortunate, and those who purport to understand them but in reality do not understand them at all will, as Nursi points out, be in total spiritual disarray: For if the one speaking of Divine Determining and the power of choice is one of the heedless and neglectful, then he has no right to speak of them. For, impelled by his misguidance, his evil-commanding soul attributes the universe to causes and divides up

394

  On Divine Determining and Freewill God’s property among them. And he attributes the ownership of himself to himself. He ascribes his acts to himself and to causes. His responsibility and faults, he refers to Divine Determining. He will finally ascribe the power of choice to Almighty God, and he will consider Divine Determining last of all; thus discussion of them becomes meaningless. To discuss them is only a trick of the soul which is entirely contrary to the wisdom in them, in order to save such a person from responsibility.52

Here, Nursi is referring to those for whom free will means the ability to do good, which they then ascribe to themselves, and for whom Divine Determining is something which they have recourse to in order to evade responsibility. Free will, for one who is unable, or unwilling, to understand it properly, becomes a means whereby he is able to attribute to himself all that he is and all that he has, just as he attributes creation to causes and ‘divides up God’s property’ among them. When, however, he falls foul of his own misdeeds or becomes afflicted by something, Divine Determining is used as a scapegoat. This tendency to attribute virtues to oneself and vices or afflictions to Divine Determining is alluded to in a number of Quranic verses: And when adversity touches man, he calls upon Us; then when We bestow on him a favor from Us, he says, “I have only been given it because of [my] knowledge.” Rather, it is a trial, but most of them do not know.53 And when We bestow Our Grace on man (the disbeliever), he turns away and becomes arrogant, far away from the Right Path. And when evil touches him he is in great despair.54 When some trouble toucheth man, he crieth unto his Lord, turning to Him in repentance: but when He bestoweth a favour upon him as from Himself, (man) doth forget what he cried and prayed for before, and he doth set up rivals unto God, thus misleading others from God’s Path.55 Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from God; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thy (own) soul. And We have sent thee as a messenger to (instruct) mankind. And enough is God for a witness.56

In Nursi’s opinion, those who cling to Divine Determining in order to absolve themselves of responsibility for evil, or who believe that any good they do is actually the result of their free will, are “obdurate, evil-commanding souls” whose actions are in total opposition to the “mystery of Divine Determining and the wisdom of the power of choice”.57 However, others who have ‘not progressed spiritually’, and who are basically of good intention, may use Divine Determining as a kind of ‘remedy for despair and grief ’. While a believer who is sure of the principles of Divine Determining will be able to digest the fact that calamities and afflictions are sent directly by God, those who are not so sure may attribute them instead to what is, in fact, Divine Determining, but which is usually understood by them as ‘fate’. In fact, Nursi says elsewhere in the Quran that blaming calamities on causes, or on some impersonal ‘fate’, is better for one deficient in belief than attributing them directly to God, for the simple reason that if they are not fully aware of the dynamics and complexities of qadar, seeing God’s hand in calamities directly may serve inadvertently to weaken their faith. Nor should the principle of qadar be used as an excuse for either rashness or inactivity, Nursi asserts. “It should not be used,” he says, “to justify rebellion and in matters of the

395

The Qur’an Revealed  future so that it becomes a cause of dissipation and idleness; Divine determining has not been included among the matters of belief to relieve people from their obligations and responsibilities.” 58 In other words, there is a great temptation to use Divine Determining for reasons that are pretextual. Nursi gives the example of rebellion against the state, for example, which may be justified quite easily after the event by invoking the principle of qadar and claiming that ‘since it happened, it must have been destined to happen.’ As for the habit of using qadar as an excuse for inaction, this too is rife among those who have failed to grasp its true meaning. Part of the reason for this may well be the influence of groups such as the Jabriyya, whose abject fatalism surely must, if carried through to its rather less than logical conclusion, turn to futilism. For if, going back to our earlier example, X will die regardless of whether or not Y shoots him, then what possible reason is there for me to do anything? If my sustenance is ‘destined’ to reach me, it makes no difference whether I work or whether I remain idle; if I am going to die at an appointed hour anyway, it makes no difference whether I cross the road with my eyes open or whether I stumble across blindfolded, and so on. This attitude – which some philosophers have called the ‘lazy argument’ – may on the surface indicate trust in God, but in reality it is nothing more than an excuse for indolence and inertia.59 True trust in God, one assumes, would entail bearing in mind that we live in a realm where causes and effects are not disjointed, and that, to paraphrase the famous Prophetic tradition, one must have trust in God and tie up one’s camel. To fail to tether one’s camel, claiming that if it is ‘destined’ to be stolen, it makes no difference whether it is tethered or not, is to deny the wisdom of apparent causality and to absolve oneself of the duty to act responsibly.

Divine Determining: source of limitation or means of liberation?

Given the all-embracing nature of Divine Determining as outlined by Nursi, and bearing in mind that even though man may feel as though he has freedom of action, the fact remains that the only thing he can call his own is the freedom to incline towards one act or another, how is it possible not to feel burdened and constrained? However hard one tries to accept that God is just and would neither task man with the impossible nor punish him without reason, the difficulty one often has in reconciling the sheer absoluteness of Divine power with the notion of human free-will may on occasion lead to the belief that qadar is, whatever the theologians say, a negation of human freedom. Surely to believe that everything is determined, including the freely chosen acts of man, is irksome for the human spirit, which yearns for expansion and freedom of expression? Nursi disagrees. Not only is belief in qadar not restrictive, he says, it is actually liberating. It is not burdensome; rather, it affords a luminosity and joy producing a lightness, ease and spirit, and ensuring confidence and security. Because if man does not believe in Divine Determining, he is compelled to bear a burden as heavy as the world on the shoulders of his spirit within a constricted space, which allows him only an insignificant independence and temporary freedom. For man is connected with the whole universe. He has infinite aims and desires. But since his power, will and freedom are insufficient to meet a millionth of these, it may be understood how awesome is the burden of the distress

396

  On Divine Determining and Freewill he bears. Thus, belief in Divine Determining throws that burden in its entirety onto the ship of Divine Determining, allowing him to roam free within its perfections with perfect ease and perfect freedom of spirit and heart. It only negates the petty freedom of the evilcommanding soul and smashes its Pharaoh-like tyranny and lordship, and its acting as it wishes. Belief in Divine Determining produces such pleasure and happiness it is beyond description. 60

To render his explanation more acceptable to both the intellect and the emotions, Nursi illustrates with an allegory the satisfaction that is to be gained from belief in Divine Determining. Two men travelled to the seat of government of a king and there entered his private palace, a place of rare wonders. One of them did not recognize the king and, laying hands on everything and stealing them, wanted to settle there. However, he experienced certain difficulties, for he had to manage the palace and its park, oversee its revenues, work its machines and feed its strange animals; he suffered constant distress. The paradiselike park became hell for him. He pitied everything. He could not govern them. He passed his time regretfully. Then this thieving, unmannerly man was cast into prison as a punishment. The second man recognized the king and knew himself to be his guest. He believed that all the matters in the park and palace occurred through the regulation of the law, and that everything functioned with perfect ease in accordance with a programme. Leaving the difficulties to the king’s law, he benefited with complete enjoyment from all the pleasures of that Paradise-like garden, and relying on the king’s mercy and the efficacy of the administrative laws, he saw everything as agreeable and passed his life in perfect pleasure and happiness. He understood the meaning of the saying: “He who believes in Divine Determining is saved from grief.” 61

For Nursi, the man who did not recognise that the palace was under the control of the king is like the man who is unable, or unwilling, to believe in Divine Determining: wishing to control everything himself, but unable to completely control anything at all, what should be a heaven for him is turned into a hell. The man who recognises that the palace has an owner who is in charge is like the man who believes in Divine Determining and grasps the wisdom behind it. Free from the monomaniacal desire to control things which are far from his grasp, and refusing to carry the burden of a whole world on his shoulders, he places his trust in the Sovereign and is able to live at peace with himself and his world. For Nursi, then, belief in Divine Determining, if understood and assimilated properly, is a force which frees man from the constant need to exert ownership over that which is not his or to take charge of things beyond his control. In this sense, the conviction that Divine Determining is a regulatory principle that governs the whole of creation can, as far as Nursi is concerned, only be a liberating one. It is fitting that the final words in this analysis of Nursi’s discourse on Divine Determining be his own: To conclude, I would say this: O man! You have a will known as the power of choice which is extremely weak, but whose hand in evil acts and destruction is extremely long and in good deeds is extremely short. Give one of the hands of that will of yours to

397

The Qur’an Revealed  supplication, so that it may reach Paradise, a fruit of the chain of good deeds, and stretch to eternal happiness. And give its other hand to the seeking of forgiveness, so that it may be short for evil deeds and will not reach the Zaqqum-tree of Hell, which is one fruit of that accursed tree. That is, just as supplication and reliance on God greatly strengthen the inclination to do good, so repentance and the seeking of forgiveness cut the inclination to do evil, putting an end to its transgressions.62

398

Chapter Thirteen On Sincerity and Brotherhood Introduction

Although sincerity (ikhlās.) and brotherhood (ukhuwwa) are not treated together in the Risale-i Nur, the two concepts are so interlinked in the Nursian worldview that it seems appropriate to discuss them here as two sides of the same coin: like īmān and islām, true sincerity and brotherhood are correlative, and one cannot exist without the other. If sincerity, which is the foundational component of the relationship, does not lead to brotherhood, it cannot be called sincerity in the real sense of the word. And if brotherhood is not based on true sincerity, it cannot be called brotherhood at all. Sincerity is foundational not only to brotherhood but to the whole spectrum of beliefs, practices and behaviours required of the Muslim believer. Sincerity means acting in the name of God alone – in a state of bismillāh – and it is through sincerity that all actions are sacralised: any undertaking that does not have the worship of God as its goal is a profane undertaking and confers no spiritual benefit on the one engaged in it. It is the inability of the believers to ensure or safeguard sincerity that Nursi addresses in his discourse on ikhlās. Man being what he is, negligence, even for a second, may cause a soul to focus not on God but on itself. In such a state, actions carried out become sullied and cheapened: negligence is the crack through which the temptations of the lower self creep through, changing what is potentially a sacred act into a profane and futile one. Sincerity for believers entails an almost monomaniacal absorption in the ultimate goal, which is the knowledge, love and worship of the Creator, and in the commitment to act in His name alone. Nursi compares the sincerity of believers in their aim to please God with the determination of the unbelievers – itself a form of sincerity – to please their own selves, and finds the sincerity of the believers wanting. His overarching message is that because people of religion are more susceptible to shortfalls in true sincerity, they often appear more divided and, as a result, more susceptible to subjugation and humiliation, than their unbelieving counterparts. While it is clear that Nursi considers sincerity to be fundamental to all human actions, it is the interface between sincerity and brotherhood which appears to concern him most in

399

The Qur’an Revealed  his treatises on the subjects. That this should be so is not wholly surprising, given that Nursi was writing at a time when belief and religion were perceived as being under threat from a range of alien doctrines and ideologies, directed by those whom Nursi called ‘the people of misguidance’. The only way that Muslims might counter such attacks, Nursi argues, was through unity and the abandonment of internal discord. And unity, by its very nature, must be predicated on sincerity. Yet although Nursi’s concern was for the integrity of the Muslim community, his emphasis on brotherhood should not be seen as just another example of consequentialist special pleading. A point all too often missed is that calls for unity by Muslims have for the most part been – and, indeed, continue to be - instrumentalist in nature: for the most part, brotherhood is advocated in order to remedy the disunity at the heart of the Muslim community which has led to a decline in its status as a credible civilizational force. As such, the emphasis on unity is part of an ongoing discourse of power, designed to facilitate the achievement of socio-political goals. Many calls for unity are thus made within the framework of utilitarian aims, and not simply because it is demanded of believers and Muslims by God regardless of whether it proves conducive to material benefit or not. As with so many other notions, the idea of unity for the sake of God alone, and not for some concrete, palpable result in this world, may appear to many to be devoid of purpose. After all, one may argue, whether Muslims have sincerity, brotherhood and unity does not affect God in the slightest. Since it is man who needs these qualities, then surely they must be for a purpose. And the purpose, the classic utilitarian may claim, is to enable Muslims to attain once more the greatness they possessed at the zenith of Muslim civilization, or to relive once more the ‘golden age’ of the Muslim community-state. Unity, brotherhood, love and sincerity thus become means towards an end, rather than ends in themselves. For these things to be ends in themselves rather than means to a concrete goal must seem anathema to a certain Muslim mindset which, owing to centuries of subjugation to the seemingly superior civilization of the non-Muslim West, is focused on Islam as power rather than Islam as faith. Nursi’s treatises on sincerity and brotherhood, written during the early years of his ‘New Said’ phase, are not, as we shall see, wholly immune to accusations of instrumentalism. Indeed, if it appears at times as though he is advocating unity as a means of restoring might and dignity to a Muslim world that had suffered decades, if not centuries, of humiliation at the hands of non-Muslims, the appearance is not deceptive. After all, Nursi was not writing in a vacuum, and one must take into account the needs and emotions of the audiences he was addressing. His exposition of sincerity, for example, is a response to questions posed by those who were puzzled by the fact that the ‘people of misguidance’ appeared to be able to work together without rivalry, while the community of the ‘people of religion’ was riven with factionalism and discord. Nursi explained that their roles had been reversed because of the lack of sincerity on the part of the Muslims. However, he was not advocating sincerity merely as a means of turning the tables on the ‘people of guidance’; sincerity, for Nursi, was clearly more important as a means to personal salvation than as a means of cementing social solidarity. A close reading of Nursi’s writings on ikhlās. and ukhuwwa reveals that, as with all of his writings, one takes from them as much as one brings, or as much as one needs. In a

400

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood manner not dissimilar to that of the Quran, the Risale addresses different people at different levels: in the case of the treatises on sincerity and brotherhood, what appears to one as instrumentalism will appear to another as stereotypical Nursian expediency, itself a wise means to a wise end. Given that the treatises were written during a period of his life when he had turned his back on ‘worldly’ politics, and when the restoration of ‘Islamic civilization’ did not have the same significance for him as it did during his years of political activism at the beginning of the 20th century, it is difficult to see in Nursi’s exhortations to sincerity and brotherhood anything but a desire to call Muslims to a principle – the principle of unity - made sacred by the Quran itself, and advocated purely for its own sake rather than the attainment of some political or ideological benefit. This is not to say, of course, that sincerity and brotherhood, so long as they are adhered to sincerely, do not produce outcomes which may be materially advantageous. The selfless embrace of the principles of sincerity and brotherhood by the Muslims of the Prophetic era, for example, yielded numerous concrete benefits, from victories in the early battles against the Quraysh of Mecca to the establishment of a city-state, itself the kernel of a civilization which would later expand to cover half of the known world. The material benefits of sincerity and brotherhood – and the unity which flows forth from them – are undeniable. But the supra-material benefits – the benefits which accrue to the human soul, and which are not quantifiable in concrete terms – are undoubtedly much greater. It is these supra-material benefits which must, in Nursi’s view, be uppermost in the mind of the believers. For the cementing of brotherhood and the pursuit of unity cannot, if undertaken merely for the sake of material gain, admit of true sincerity in the Quranic sense of the term.

On Sincerity Verily We sent the Book down to you in truth, so worship God in sincerity, for God’s is sincerely practised religion. 1

Nursi’s discourse on sincerity begins with a number of questions: why is it that those who neglect religion and devote their energy to pursuing worldly aims appear perfectly able to work together towards some goal without the slightest hint of jealousy or rivalry, while those who claim to be followers of religion – religious scholars, for example, or devotees of the Sufi path – often appear to be at each other’s throats, even though in theory they are the ‘people of truth’? Surely discord and mutual hostility are traits that should characterise the hypocrites and the misguided rather than those who believe and who are by definition people of peace and concord? Why is it apparently so easy for unbelievers to unite yet so difficult for believers to do the same? Nursi answers these questions by elucidating a number of causes for the loss of sincerity among believers; below we analyse four of them.

First cause

If the ‘people of truth’ dispute with one another, Nursi says, we should not assume it is because the truth they claim to possess is an illusion. Similarly, if the ‘people of neglect’ are seen to cooperate with each other in relative peace and harmony, we should not assume that it is because they are in possession of the truth.

401

The Qur’an Revealed  Rather it is that a specific duty and particular function has been assigned to the classes in society, like ‘the worldly’, those engaged in politics, and those who have received a secular education, and thus the functions of the various groups, societies and communities have been defined and become distinguished from one another. Similarly, the material reward they are to receive for their functions in order to maintain a livelihood, as well as the moral reward that consists in the attention they receive from men for the sake of their ambition and pride - this too is established and specified. There is therefore nothing held in common to the degree that it might produce conflict, dissension and rivalry. However evil be the path that they tread, they will be able to preserve unity and agreement. 2

The world of the ‘people of neglect’, Nursi explains, is characterised by its hierarchization: people in their social roles or positions know what is expected of them and what they might expect of others; degrees of reward are established and acknowledged, and expectations are more or less fixed. Furthermore, they have their own ‘religion’ – even it be the religion of irreligion – and thus their world is based on ‘I’, on what ‘I’ want. Self-centredness is an accepted norm and to follow one’s own desires in order to better one’s ‘self ’ is an acceptable and well-established behaviour. Since they do not hold a single overarching belief in common, there is nothing for them to fight over in this regard: there is not one God but many ‘gods’ – as many, in fact, as there are individuals in society. And in order for an individual to be ‘worshipped’ – or, rather, in secular parlance, ‘respected’ – he must submit to the accepted social norms of the society of which is he part, acknowledging the metaphorical ‘godhood’ of others. The society inhabited by those whom Nursi calls ‘the people of neglect’ is one that will be instantly recognisable to students of the functionalist approach to sociology, and in particular the ideas of Talcott Parsons.3. Functionalist analysis regards social systems as having certain needs, and sees society as a tightly-knit network of interlocking social structures. If the needs of society are being met, it is the social structures that meet these needs. These structures are functional in the sense that they help society to operate. Just as the structures are interdependent, the roles taken on by people who make up these structures are also interdependent, with each part affecting the others. In the view of Parsons, each individual occupies a particular status or position within a structure, and so long as that individual performs the role required of him or her in the proper manner, the structures function smoothly. Disorder – which one might expect if individuals really were separate entities pursuing only their own self-interest – does not usually occur, Parsons argues, because people tend to act on the basis of their values, which in turn tend to be oriented and constrained by the values and norms of the society in which they are embedded. While individuals do pursue their self-interest and are concerned with their own gratification, these are not their sole concerns: there is a strong degree of agreement among the majority of people in any particular society, and they do co-operate and help each other. This is because the ends they pursue are grounded in shared values and norms, which become ‘internalised in the motivational systems of individuals.’ 4 The shared values and norms, together with the generally agreed upon means for accomplishing ends, are seen by Parsons to be crucial for the smooth running of society. Among these norms is the notion that a certain degree of inequality must exist in order for society as a whole to function. Rewards – in the form of income, status, prestige or power – must be given in order to encourage people to perform

402

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood the roles which are required to make the structures of society work smoothly. Despite being somewhat over-simplistic, the hierarchization which Nursi describes is basically nothing more than the agreed upon inequality which underpins the structures of society according to functionalist theory. But as for the people of religion, the scholars, and those who follow the path, the duty of each is concerned with all men; their material reward is not set and specified, and their share in social esteem and acceptance and public attention is not predetermined. Many may be candidates for the same position; many hands may stretch out for each moral and material reward that is offered. Hence it is that conflict and rivalry arise; concord is changed into discord, and agreement into dispute.5

The ‘people of religion’ – and here Nursi is alluding in the main to those who are actively engaged in communicating the truths of belief to others – differ from the ‘people of neglect’ in that they do not live in a normatively hierarchized world. The scholars of religion and the masters of the Sufi and the gnostic paths are vying for an audience in an arena that has no written rules, and where attention is attracted by means other than climbing career ladders and moving up through heavily regimented social ranks. The danger for them, therefore, is not the allure of material benefit – although, as Nursi will later show, they are not immune from such temptation – but the appeal of the attention that is given to them by those whom they teach and guide. Be aware that the attention of men cannot be demanded, but only given. If it is given, one should not delight in it. If one delights in it, sincerity is lost and hypocrisy takes its place. The attention of men, if accompanied by the desire for honour and fame, is not a reward and a prize, but a reproach and chastisement for lack of sincerity. Such attention of men, such honour and fame, harm sincerity, the source of vitality for all good deeds, and even though they yield a slight pleasure as far as the gate of the tomb, on the other side of that gate they take on the form of torment. One should not therefore desire the attention of men, but flee and shy away from it. Be warned, all you who worship fame and run after honour and rank! Now the cure and remedy for this appalling disease is sincerity. Sincerity may be gained by preferring the worship of God to the worship of one’s own soul, by causing God’s pleasure to vanquish the pleasure of the soul and the ego, and thus manifesting the meaning of the verse Verily my reward is from God alone 6 by renouncing the material and moral reward to be had from men and thus manifesting the meaning of the verse Naught is incumbent on the Messenger but conveying the message; 7 and by knowing that such matters as goodly acceptance, and making a favourable impression, and gaining the attention of men are God’s concern and a favour from Him, and that they play no part in conveying the message, which is one’s own duty, nor are they necessary for it, nor is one charged with gaining them - by knowing this a person will be successful in gaining sincerity, otherwise it will vanish.8

Arguably the quickest way to lose sincerity is to desire the attention of others and the establishment of a reputation among men; the goal, after all, is the communication of the message and not the self-aggrandisement of the messenger. The most efficacious cure for this ‘appalling disease’, Nursi says, is to refocus on sincerity itself. And sincerity, he suggests,

403

The Qur’an Revealed  may be attained by preferring the worship of God to the glorification of one’s own ego, for it is only by aiming to attract God’s eternal pleasure that the transient, trivial pleasures of the lower self will be extinguished, bringing into focus the verse Verily my reward is from God alone.9 Sincerity may be attained by renouncing the rewards to be had from men – be it in the form of financial remuneration or personal attention and flattery – and thus manifesting the inner meaning of the verse Nothing is incumbent on the Messenger but the communication of the message.10 Indeed, sincerity is contingent on the realisation that making an impression on others and gaining attention and renown play no part in the communication of the truth and should have no bearing upon one’s approach or intention. If, in communicating the truth to others, one gains a following and a degree of renown, that is a result of Divine grace: such results should neither be desired nor expected.

Second cause

If the ‘people of misguidance’ are often seen to be in agreement with each other, it is because, Nursi says, they are aware of how low and needy they are; conversely, the disharmony which occurs among the ‘people of guidance’ is a sign not of their abasement but, paradoxically, of their sense of dignity and single-mindedness. That is to say that the people of neglect - those misguided ones sunk in worldly concerns - are weak and abased because they do not rely on truth and reality. On account of their abasement, they need to augment their strength, and because of this need they wholeheartedly embrace the aid and co-operation of others. Even though the path they follow is misguidance, they preserve their agreement. It is as if they were making their godlessness into a form of worship of the truth, their misguidance into a form of sincerity, their irreligion into a form of solidarity, and their hypocrisy into concord, and thus attaining success. For genuine sincerity, even for the sake of evil, cannot fail to yield results, and whatever man seeks with sincerity, God will grant him it. Yes, “Whoever seeks earnestly shall find” is a rule of truth. Its scope is comprehensive and includes the matter under discussion.11

The ‘people of misguidance’ come together because, acutely aware as they are of their own weakness, they realise that unless they join forces with others, success will not be forthcoming. So driven are they by worldly desires that they are ready to unite wholeheartedly with likeminded people as a means to an end. It matters not that once the end is reached, the unity dissipates; what is important is the fact that they are able to unite at all. And they are able to unite because they are, in their own manner, sincere with regard to the goals they pursue, however misguided or morally reprehensible. The weak form powerful unions, Nursi says, precisely because of their need for union. For example, a thief will not have the wherewithal to rob a bank if he works alone; if he unites with a group of thieves, however, the likelihood of their pulling off a bank heist will increase. Also, the more aware they are of their need for unity, the greater will be the sincerity with which they unite. But as for the people of guidance and religion, the religious scholars and those who follow the Sufi path, since they rely upon truth and reality, and each of them on the road of truth thinks only of his Sustainer and trusts in His succour, they derive dignity from their

404

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood belief. When they feel weakness, they turn not toward men, but toward God and seek help from Him. On account of difference in outlook, they feel no real need for the aid of the one whose outlook apparently opposes their own, and see no need for agreement and unity. Indeed, if obstinacy and egoism are present, one will imagine himself to be right and the other to be wrong; discord and rivalry take the place of concord and love. Thus sincerity is chased away and its function disrupted.12

What Nursi is describing here is a situation that occurs when, because of their insistence upon the all-encompassing nature of Divine grace, believers who are in need tend not to rely on their fellow believers for support, believing – mistakenly – that were they to have recourse to that which is perceived as ‘other-than-God’, they would in some way be violating the principle of Divine unity. Why, a believer may ask, should I present my needs before other believers when I can present them directly to God Himself? A believer with this mindset will set his sights on God alone and thus see no reason to unite with others, particularly if their outlooks and approaches are different to his. This unwillingness to ask other believers for help may stem from the misguided notion that to turn to others is somehow to detract from their reliance on, and trust in, the mercy and succour of God. What they would seem to overlook is that as part of the causal nexus, other beings may be seen as the means or causes (asbāb) through which one may approach God. Recourse to created beings does not signify associationism (shirk) as long as the intention remains God-oriented. Nursi talks about two kinds of invocation: the vocal (qawlī) and the practical (fi‘lī), both of which must be present when one is asking something of God. In the case of a person with a headache, for example, the vocal invocation would entail calling, for example, on the Divine name Shāf ī (the Healer), while the practical invocation would be to have recourse to painkillers. Recourse to headache medication does not take anything away from one’s trust in God: since we are limited, time-bound beings, enmeshed in the causal system, we have no option but to have recourse to other beings. So long as causes are seen for what they are – namely a veil on the Divine – then to have recourse to them does not imply reliance on ‘other-thanGod’, for the simple reason that ‘other-than-God’ is only as efficacious as it is perceived to be. Thus to ask others for help is in no way construable as a slight on Divine unity. Indeed, as Nursi reminds us, to seek unity with others is to give open expression to one’s own impotence – on the proviso, of course, that one imputes the power stemming from unity not to the actual act of uniting but to the grace of God which comes about as a result of obeying the command to unite. True believers do not actually believe that a hundred men are, as a group, any less impotent than a single man, for however many men unite, they are still impotent: as Nursi points out, uniting is simply the means whereby Divine succour is invoked. It is this practical invocation – the acknowledgement of impotence – that has to be offered in order to elicit Divine aid. When the inability of a believer to unite with others is exacerbated by his conviction that his outlook is right and theirs wrong, discord and enmity may ensue and sincerity will naturally be jeopardised. Nursi prescribes a number of interrelated solutions for this affliction, the most important of which is that brother believers, cognizant of the numerous things they hold in common, should unite sincerely within the fold of Islam, regardless of

405

The Qur’an Revealed  individual outlooks, approaches and theological or jurisprudential positions. Union with the ‘people of truth’, Nursi suggests, is a cause of Divine succour and in keeping with the dignity of religion.13 To be attached to a particular outlook, and to act positively in its furtherance, is completely acceptable, so long as one does not disparage the outlooks of others or try to prove one’s own approach superior to those of others. Nursi admits that the follower of any outlook – so long as it lies within the ambit of what is Quranically legitimate – has the right to say that his outlook is true, or even the best; after all, if this were not the case in his eyes, he would not hold it. However, he does not have the right to say that his outlook alone is true, or that his approach alone is good – in which case he would be casting aspersions on the outlooks and approaches held and followed legitimately by fellow believers. When you know your way and opinions to be true, you have the right to say, “My way is right and the best.” But you do not have the right to say, “My way alone is right.” According to the sense of “The eye of contentment is too dim to perceive faults; it is the eye of anger that exhibits all vice,” your unjust view and distorted opinion cannot be the all-decisive judge and cannot condemn the belief of another as invalid.14

To remedy the affliction of discord and rancour between them, believers should also realise that as individuals they will never be able to take on an enemy as cunning and wellequipped as the collective force of the ‘people of misguidance’. For this force arises from their solidarity, and can be countered only with an equal, or greater, show of solidarity on the part of the believers. Again, Nursi is referring not to the threat of physical attacks but to the encroachment of atheistic materialism and the dangers it posed – and still poses – for the minds of the Muslim masses. In order to preserve justice and truth in the face of ‘that fearsome collective force of misguidance’, he says, individuals working alone can do nothing. A community divided by in-fighting and mutual hostility is a community that will never be able to ward off attacks from outside, be they physical or immaterial. In order to effect this remedy and achieve unity, Nursi says, it is imperative that individuals abandon the egoistic desires of the self, renounce all desires for self-aggrandizement, and give up all insignificant feelings which are triggered by petty disagreements and instances of rivalry. Only if believers are able to reform themselves in this way, he says, will sincerity be preserved and its effects made manifest.15 It is worth noting that it is not only with sincerity among Muslims that Nursi is concerned: he also stresses the need for Muslim believers to unite with their co-monotheists – Christians in particular – against the forces of unbelief. It is even recorded in authentic traditions of the Prophet that at the end of time the truly pious among the Christians will unite with the People of the Quran and fight their common enemy, irreligion. And at this time, too, the people of religion and truth need to unite sincerely not only with their own brothers and fellow believers, but also with the truly pious and spiritual ones among the Christians, temporarily disengaging from the discussion and debate of points of difference in order to combat their joint enemyaggressive atheism.16

406

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood

Third cause

If the ‘people of misguidance’ are able to unite, Nursi asserts, one should not imagine that it is because of any noble aspirations on their part. The wholehearted union among the misguided, neglectful and worldly with respect to their worldly affairs does not result from manliness, aspiration and zeal. For the neglectful and worldly think only of the life of this world, and they firmly embrace the concerns of the life of this world with all their senses, their spirit and heart, and cling firmly to whoever aids them in those concerns. Like a mad diamond merchant who gives an exorbitant price for a piece of glass worth virtually nothing, they devote time, which is of the highest value, to matters which in reality and in the view of the people of truth are worth nothing. Paying such a high price and offering oneself with the devotion of all the senses will naturally result in a wholehearted sincerity that yields success in the matter at hand, so that the people of truth are defeated. As a result of this defeat, the people of truth decline into a state of abasement, humiliation, hypocrisy and ostentation, and sincerity is lost. Thus the people of truth are obliged to flatter and cringe before a handful of vile and lowly men of the world.17

It is their almost monomaniacal preoccupation with the concerns of the ‘life of this world’ which enables the ‘people of misguidance’ to form alliances with each other in order to reach their goals. Furthermore, the effort and energy they expend on pursuing those goals, and the devotion and dedication that is evident from their attempts to achieve their ambitions all serve to betoken a form of sincerity on their part beside which the sincerity of the people of truth often pales in comparison. The striving of the ‘people of misguidance’ for the things of this world is undertaken for the most part with considerably more seriousness and commitment than exist in the mundane undertakings of the ‘people of religion’. This is because the people of truth are generally concerned with benefits to be had in the Hereafter and hence direct their zeal, aspiration and manliness to those important and numerous matters. Since they do not devote time - the true capital of man - to a single concern, their union with their fellows can never become firm. 18

It is clear, then, that if the ‘people of truth’ are divided, one should not imagine that it is because their motives or ambitions are unrighteous. Disagreement among the people of truth does not arise from lack of zeal and aspiration, nor does union among the people of misguidance arise from loftiness of aspiration. That which impels the people of guidance to the misuse of their high aspiration and hence to disagreement and rivalry is the desire for heavenly reward that is counted as a praiseworthy quality in respect of the Hereafter, and extreme eagerness with respect to duties pertaining to the Hereafter. Thinking to oneself, “Let me gain this reward, let me guide these people, let them listen to me,” he takes up a position of rivalry towards the true brother who faces him and who stands in real need of his love, assistance, brotherhood and aid. Saying to oneself, “Why are my pupils going to him? Why don’t I have as many pupils as him?” he falls prey to egoism, inclines to the chronic disease of ambition, loses all sincerity, and opens the door to hypocrisy.19

407

The Qur’an Revealed  Desire for reward in the hereafter is, Nursi contends, a praiseworthy desire. However, if the nature of the hereafter is not understood properly, desire for reward may lead to discord and rivalry. The believer should realise that the rewards of the hereafter are infinite in number, and that to compete with other believers for them is meaningless. In matters relating to religion and the Hereafter there should be no rivalry, envy or jealousy; indeed there can be none of these in truth. The reason for envy and jealousy is that when several hands reach out after a single object, when several eyes are fixed on a single position, when several stomachs hunger for a single loaf of bread, first envy arises as a result of conflict, dispute and rivalry, and then jealousy. Since many people desire the same thing in the world, and because the world, narrow and transitory as it is, cannot satisfy the limitless desires of man, people become rivals of each other. However, in the Hereafter a five-hundred-year paradise will be given to a single individual; seventy thousand palaces and houris will be granted to him; and every one of the people of Paradise will be perfectly satisfied with his share.20 It is thus clear that there is no cause for rivalry in the Hereafter, nor can there be rivalry. In that case, neither should there be any rivalry with respect to those good deeds that entail reward in the Hereafter; there is no room for jealousy here. The one jealous here is either a hypocrite, seeking worldly result through the performance of good deeds, or a sincere but ignorant devotee, not knowing the true purpose of good deeds and not comprehending that sincerity is the spirit and foundation of all good deeds. 21

Rivalry with respect to good deeds may manifest itself in a religious scholar’s desire to attract more students than a fellow scholar; such egoistic need for attention is a hallmark of the mindset of the worldly, whose rewards are limited to this brief earthly existence and are thus finite in nature. What the believer must bear in mind is that it is not a question of quantity but of quality: it often happens that a single righteous act is enough to secure the felicity of everlasting life, whereas for the worldly, every crust has to be worked for, and even then it is not guaranteed. For Nursi it is imperative that the believer avoid the trap of expecting rewards in this world such as the attention of others, for such expectations, especially when dashed, are a sure way of opening the door to insincerity. The cure for this error, this wound, this awesome sickness of the spirit, is the principle that “God’s pleasure is won by sincerity alone,” and not by a large following or great success. For these latter are a function of God’s will; they cannot be demanded, although they are sometimes given. Sometimes a single word will result in someone’s salvation and hence the pleasure of God. Quantity should not receive too much attention, for sometimes to guide one man to the truth may be as pleasing to God as guiding a thousand. Moreover sincerity and adherence to the truth require that one should desire the Muslims to benefit from anyone and at any place they can. To think “Let them take lessons from me so that I gain the reward” is a trick of the soul and the ego. To those who are greedy for rewards in the Hereafter and the performance of deeds entitling them to such rewards, I would say this. There have been certain prophets who had only a limited following but received the infinite reward of the sacred duty of prophethood. The true achievement lies, then, not in gaining a vast following, but in gaining God’s pleasure. What do you imagine yourself to be, that saying, “Let everyone listen to me,” you forget your function, and interfere in what is strictly God’s concern? Whether people accept

408

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood you and gather round you is God’s concern. So look to your own duty and do not meddle in God’s business.22

The reward of prophets is, as Nursi explains, given not on account of the number of followers they attract but, rather, in return for the efforts they expend in carrying out their prophetic duties. Religious scholars – like prophets – should not care about the number of devotees they gather around them. After all, even if no human beings hear or accept the truth they speak, there are numerous other beings in creation who will listen and appreciate it. For it is not only men who make it possible for those who hear and speak the truth to gain rewards. The sentient and spiritual beings of God and His angels have filled the universe and adorned its every part. If you want plentiful reward, take sincerity as your foundation and think only of God’s pleasure. Then every syllable of the blessed words that issue forth from your mouth will be brought to life by your sincerity and truthful intention, and going to the ears of innumerable sentient beings, they will illumine them and earn you reward. For when, for example, you say, “Praise and thanks be to God,” millions of these words, great and small, are written on the page of the air by God’s leave. Since the All-Wise Inscriber did nothing prodigally or in vain, He created innumerable ears, as many as were needed to hear those multiple blessed words. If those words are brought to life in the air by sincerity and truthful intent, they will enter the ears of the spirit beings like some tasty fruit in the mouth. But if God’s pleasure and sincerity do not bring those words to life, they will not be heard, and reward will be had only for the single utterance made by the mouth. Pay good attention to this, you Quran reciters who are sad that your voices are not more beautiful and that more people do not listen to you!23

Nursi suggests here that man’s limited imagination often does not allow him to grasp that even if other men do not hear him, the air around him will be imbued with his utterances, translated into sound waves that propagate through the air and enter the ‘ears’ of countless material and supra-material beings. For this very reason, Nursi says, one should never consider such words wasted.

Fourth cause

If the ‘people of guidance’ disagree and fall into rivalry, one should not imagine, Nursi says, that it is because they lack vision or are unaware of the consequences of their actions. Similarly, if the ‘people of misguidance’ are able to agree and enter into strong alliances, one should not think that it is down to any farsightedness on their part. The people of misguidance, under the influence of the soul and caprice, and the dominance of sense-perception, which is blind to all consequences and always prefers an ounce of immediate pleasure to a ton of future pleasure, come together in eager concord for the sake of instant benefit and immediate gratification. Indeed, lowly and heartless worshippers of the ego are bound to congregate around worldly and immediate pleasures and benefits. As for the people of guidance, they have set their faces to the rewards of the Hereafter and its perfections, in accordance with the lofty instructions of the heart and the intellect, but even though a proper sense of direction, a complete sincerity and self-

409

The Qur’an Revealed  sacrificing union and concord are possible, because they have failed to rid themselves of egoism, and on account of deficiency and excess, they lose their union, that lofty source of power, and permit their sincerity to be shattered.24

However much belief they have, and however hereafter-oriented their endeavours may be, believers – being human and subject to Divine trial - will always be in danger of succumbing to the whims and caprices of the ego. For Nursi, it is when the ego raises its head that sincerity flies out of the window, taking with it all hope of securing a meaningful and enduring union with other believers. The cure and remedy for this serious disease is to be proud of the company of all those travelling the path of truth, in accordance with the principle of love for God’s sake; to follow them and defer leadership to them; and to consider whoever is walking on God’s path to be probably better than oneself, thereby breaking the ego and regaining sincerity. Salvation is also to be had from that disease by knowing that an ounce of deeds performed in sincerity is preferable to a ton performed without sincerity, and by preferring the status of a follower to that of a leader, with all the danger and responsibility that it involves. Thus sincerity is to be had, and one’s duties of preparation for the Hereafter may be correctly performed.25

For Nursi, ‘breaking the ego’ – or, at least, taming it – is crucial if discord among believers is to be avoided and sincerity secured. To ‘break the ego’ in this regard means to overlook the faults of others, to close one’s eyes to their shortcomings and to give them the benefit of the doubt at all time, in keeping with what Nursi calls the ‘rule of courtesy established by the Quran’ in the verse When they pass by error, they pass by it with honourable avoidance.26 Regard it as your primary duty - one on which your state in the Hereafter depends -to abandon internal dissension when attacked by an enemy from the outside, and thereby to deliver the people of truth from their abasement and humiliation! Practise the brotherhood, love and co-operation insistently enjoined by hundreds of Quranic verses and traditions of the Prophet! Establish with all of your powers a union with your fellows and brothers in religion that is stronger than the union of the worldly! Do not fall into dispute! Do not say to yourself, “Instead of spending my valuable time on such petty matters, let me spend it on more valuable things such as the invocation of God and meditation,” then withdrawing and weakening unity. For precisely what you imagine to be a matter of slight importance in this moral jihad may in fact be very great. In just the same way that under certain special and unusual conditions the watch kept for one hour by a soldier may be equal to a whole year’s worship, in this age when the people of truth have been defeated, the precious day that you spend on some apparently minor matter concerning the moral struggle may be worth a thousand days, just like the hour of that soldier. Whatever is undertaken for the sake of God cannot be divided into small and great, valuable and valueless. An atom expended in sincerity and for the sake of God’s pleasure becomes like a star. What is important is not the nature of the means employed, but the result that it yields. As long as the result is God’s pleasure and the substance employed is sincerity, any means to which recourse is had will be great, not small.27 O people of the truth and the path! The service of the truth is like carrying and preserving a great and weighty treasure. Those who carry that trust on their shoulders will

410

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood be happy and grateful whenever powerful hands rush to their aid. Far from being jealous, one should proudly applaud the superior strength, effectiveness and capacity of those who in upright love come forward to offer their help. Why then look on true brothers and self-sacrificing helpers in a spirit of rivalry, thus losing sincerity? You will be exposed to fearsome accusations in the eyes of the people of misguidance, such as pursuing worldly interest through religion, even though it is something a hundred times lower than you and your belief, earning your livelihood through the knowledge of truth and rivalling others in greed and acquisitiveness. The sole remedy for this disease is to accuse your own soul before others raise these charges, and always to take the side of your fellow, not your own soul. The rule of truth and equity established by the scholars of the art of debate is this: “Whoever desires, in debate on any subject, that his own word should turn out to be true, whoever is happy that he turns out to be right and his enemy to be wrong and mistaken - such a person has acted unjustly.” Not only that, such a person loses, for when he emerges the victor in such a debate, he has not learned anything previously unknown to him, and his probable pride will cause him loss. But if his adversary turns out to be right, he will have learned something previously unknown to him and thereby gained something without any loss, as well as being saved from pride. In other words, one fair in his dealings and enamoured of the truth will subject the desire of his own soul to the demands of the truth. If he sees his adversary to be right, he will accept it willingly and support it happily. If then the people of religion, the people of truth, the people of the path and the people of learning take this principle as their guide, they will attain sincerity and be successful in those duties that prepare them for the Hereafter. Through God’s mercy, they will be delivered from this appalling wretchedness and misfortune from which they presently suffer.28

Sincerity among the students of the Risale-i Nur Do not fall into dispute, lest you lose heart and your power depart.29

While Nursi’s counsels on sincerity were meant for the generality of believing Muslims, there are some passages in which he addresses the students of the Risale-i Nur directly. Given the often parlous socio-political circumstances which attended the unfolding of Nursi’s mission and the production and dissemination of his works, the need to inculcate his closest followers with a sense of duty was felt most acutely. The students of the Risale-i Nur were the future of the Risale-i Nur, and that future hinged, for Nursi, on the sincerity and dedication of those who had opted to tread his path. His own life was in many ways a beleaguered one, and he was more aware than anyone else that a life dedicated to promulgating the teachings of the Risale-i Nur may not be any less perilous than his had been. Nursi was not only waging a metaphorical jihād against the currents of scientism, atheistic materialism and cultural colonialism that were sweeping through the Muslim world, but he was also under constant pressure and persecution from the state. It was imperative, therefore, that his students be made aware not only of the tremendous responsibility they were shouldering, but also of the dangers they faced – dangers which could be mitigated only by the existence of unity among them which was grounded in true sincerity. However, while the message which imbues these

411

The Qur’an Revealed  passages is directed at the students of the Risale-i Nur in particular, it is one from which important lessons may be drawn by all Muslim believers. O my brothers of the Hereafter! And O my companions in the service of the Quran! You should know - and you do know-that in this world sincerity is the most important principle in works pertaining to the Hereafter in particular; it is the greatest strength, and the most acceptable intercessor, and the firmest point of support, and the shortest way to reality, and the most acceptable prayer, and the most wondrous means of achieving one’s goal, and the highest quality, and the purest worship. Since in sincerity lies much strength and many lights like those mentioned above; and since at this dreadful time, despite our few number and weak, impoverished, and powerless state and our being confronted by terrible enemies and suffering severe oppression in the midst of aggressive innovations and misguidance, an extremely heavy, important, general and sacred duty of serving belief and the Quran has been placed on our shoulders by Divine grace, we are certainly compelled more than anyone to work with all our strength to gain sincerity. We are in utter need of instilling sincerity in ourselves. Otherwise what we have achieved so far in our sacred service will in part be lost and will not persist; and we shall be held responsible. We shall manifest the severe threat contained in the Divine prohibition Nor sell my signs for a small price 30 and destroy sincerity, thus harming eternal happiness for the sake of meaningless, unnecessary, harmful, sad, self-centred, tedious, hypocritical base feelings and insignificant benefits. And in so doing we would violate all our brothers’ rights, transgress against the duty of service to the Quran, and be disrespectful towards the sacredness of the truths of belief. My brothers! There are many obstacles before great works of good. The satanic ones put up a powerful struggle against those who assist those works. One has to rely on the strength of sincerity in the face of these demons and their obstacles. You should avoid things which harm sincerity the same as you avoid snakes and scorpions. In accordance with the words of Joseph (PBWH) Nor do I absolve my own self [of blame]; the [human] soul is certainly prone to evil, unless my Sustainer do bestow His mercy, 31 the evil-commanding soul should not be relied on. Do not let egoism and the soul deceive you! 32

In order for sincerity to be gained and preserved, Nursi says, a number of steps must be taken and rules adhered to. The first is that any action undertaken should have as its goal the seeking of ‘Divine pleasure’. So long as one’s intention is to secure Divine approval, Nursi writes, it matters little if one is rejected by the whole world. Once an action has been carried out solely for the sake of Divine pleasure, God will, should His wisdom require it, make others accept and consent to that action. One’s focus should, therefore, be on pleasing God rather than gaining the approbation of others. The second rule, Nursi says, is that criticism should not be levelled by brothers against other brothers who are employed in the same task, namely the service of the Quran; nor should they incite envy in each other by displays of what they believe to be superior skill or virtue. A man’s right hand, he says, does not compete with his left; neither does his left eye find fault with his right. The limbs, organs and members of a single body are there not to highlight each other’s deficiencies but to assist each other and, if there are shortcomings, to come sincerely and compassionately to their aid.

412

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood Similarly, the components of machinery in a factory cannot compete with one another in rivalry, take precedence over each other, or dominate each other. They cannot spy out one another’s faults and criticize each other, destroy the other’s eagerness for work and cause them to become idle. Rather, they assist each other’s motions with all their capacity in order to achieve the common goal: they march towards the aim of their creation in true solidarity and unity. Should even the slightest aggression or desire to dominate interfere, it would throw the factory into confusion, causing it to be without product or result. Then the factory’s owner would demolish the factory entirely. And so, students of the Risale-i Nur, students and servants of the Quran! You and I are members of a collective personality such as is worthy of the title of ‘perfect man.’ We are like the components of a factory’s machinery which produces eternal happiness within eternal life. We are hands working on a dominical boat which will disembark the Community of Muhammad (PBWH) at the Realm of Peace, the shore of salvation. So we are surely in need of solidarity and true union, obtained through gaining sincerity for the mystery of sincerity secures through four individuals the moral strength of one thousand one hundred and eleven - indeed, we are compelled to obtain it. Yes, if three alifs do not unite, they have the value of three.33 Whereas if they do unite, through the mystery of numbers they acquire the value of one hundred and eleven. If four times four remain apart, they have a value of sixteen. But if, through the mystery of brotherhood and having a common goal and joint duty, they unite, coming together shoulder to shoulder on a line, they have the strength and value of four thousand four hundred and forty-four. Just as numerous historical events testify that the moral strength and value of sixteen self-sacrificing brothers have been greater than that of four thousand. The underlying reason for this mystery is this: each member of a true and sincere union may see also with the eyes of the other brothers, and hear with their ears. For it is as if each person of a true union of ten has the value and strength of seeing with twenty eyes, thinking with ten minds, hearing with twenty ears, and working with twenty hands.34

The third rule, Nursi points out, is the need for believers to internalise the belief that sincerity, when combined with truth, is an indomitable source of strength; even those whose undertakings are far from the path of truth are able to gain strength from the sincerity with which they imbue their wrongdoing. Nursi offers proof of the strength which is to be had from sincerity by referring to his own experiences, and the experiences of his students, in spreading the word of the Quran as reflected through the prism of the Risale-i Nur. Evidence that strength lies in truth and sincerity is this service of ours. A small amount of sincerity in our work proves this claim and is evidence for itself. Because seven or eight years of service to learning and religion here has surpassed a hundredfold the twenty years of service I performed in my native region and in Istanbul. And in my own region and in Istanbul those assisting me were a hundred or even a thousand times more numerous than my brothers who work together with me here, where I am alone, with no one, a stranger, semi-literate, under the surveillance of unfair officials and persecuted by them. I have absolutely no doubt that the service I have carried out with you these seven or eight years and the moral strength which has resulted in success a hundred times greater than formerly, has resulted from the sincerity you have. I have also to confess that through your heartfelt sincerity, you have saved me to an extent from the hypocrisy which used to

413

The Qur’an Revealed  flatter my soul under the veil of fame and renown. God willing, you will be successful in gaining absolute sincerity, and you will cause me to gain it too.35

Nursi is referring here to the era of the ‘Old Said’, spanning the first two decades of the 20th century, and his engagement with politics and socio-political reform. In his formative years, Nursi was by his own admission swept along by the waves of socio-political reformism which were lapping at the shore of the Muslim world at this time, bringing with them the promise of a solution to the degeneration of Muslim society in the face of a rapidly burgeoning and increasingly dominant West. For Nursi, as we shall see in Chapter Sixteen, the twin keys to the restoration of true civilization – the civilization of Islam – at this juncture in history were constitutionalism and educational reform. To this end, Nursi pooled his considerable intellectual resources with like-minded thinkers and ideologues, including the movers and shakers of the ‘Second Constitutional’ movement.36 When the movement proved unsuccessful, with the Constitutionalists either unwilling or unable to keep the promises they had made, Nursi’s frustration was considerable. That he attributes the failure of his endeavours in Istanbul to his own ‘hypocrisy’, and the success of his service to the Quran and the Risale in later years to the sincerity of his students, is in keeping with the generally self-deprecatory tone he adopts when talking of his own efforts. One may argue that his engagement with politics as the ‘Old Said’ was unsuccessful because, in the final analysis, his goals did not match those of the majority of political thinkers and actors with whom he seemed to share a cause. Failure occurred, then, not because Nursi or those with whom he was aligned lacked sincerity; failure occurred because Nursi’s sincerity was directed at a different goal – a goal that was clearly not uppermost in the mind of his apparent allies. In the period of the ‘New Said’, however, Nursi’s service to the Quran was able to bear fruit, in spite of the fact that he was in a much weaker position socially, constrained as he was by considerable pressure and, on occasion, tyranny, from the state, and despite having considerably fewer helpers than he had been able to call upon during his Istanbul years. Such success, he claims, could only have come about on account of the sincerity of those who were working towards the shared goal of disseminating the truths of the Risale-i Nur - even though, with typical Nursian humility, he downplays his own part in the process. The fourth rule, Nursi suggests, is that the students of the Risale-i Nur should try to appreciate the virtues and merits of their brothers as if they were their own, and in doing so, take pride in their successes. This is possible only if they are prepared to see past their own individuality and consider themselves part of a collective personality – one body of believers, each member of which aids and rejoices in the achievements of its fellow members. The Sufis have terms they use among themselves such as “annihilation in the shaykh” and “annihilation in the Prophet”. Now I am not a Sufi, but these principles of theirs are worth adopting, albeit in the form of “annihilation in the brothers.” Among brothers this is called tafānī or “annihilation in one another.” That is to say, one should try to forget the feelings of one’s own carnal soul and instead live in one’s mind with one’s brothers’ virtues and feelings. In any event, the basis of our way is brotherhood. It is not the means which is between father and son, or shaykh and disciple. It is the means of true brotherhood. At the very most a Master (ustād) intervenes. Our way is that of the closest

414

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood friendship. This friendship necessitates being the most intimate friend, the most selfsacrificing companion, the most appreciative comrade, the noblest brother. The essence of this friendship is true sincerity. One who spoils this true sincerity falls from the high pinnacle of this friendship. He may possibly fall to unimaginable depths, with nothing onto which he may cling as he descends. Yes, the way is seen to be two. There is the possibility that those who part now from this way of ours, the great highway of the Quran, are unknowingly helping the forces of irreligion, who are hostile to us. God willing, those who enter the sacred bounds of the Quran of Miraculous Exposition by means of the Risale-i Nur will always add strength to light, sincerity and belief, and will avoid such pitfalls.37

Two means of securing and preserving sincerity

While Nursi elucidates a number of means through which sincerity may be secured and preserved, the two upon which he places most emphasis are the contemplation of death and the attainment of ‘presence of heart’ (huz.  ūr al-qalb). That Ghazālī dedicated a whole section of his monumental Ih. yā ‘ulūm al-dīn to reflection on death and what lies beyond is indicative of the significance of this practice in the ethical prescriptions not only of Sufi adepts but also of mainstream Muslim theologians. For Nursi, remembrance of death serves to highlight the ephemerality of life and the futility of ambition that is directed solely at this transient world, sacrificing the everlasting goods of the hereafter for the immediate – but fleeting – gratification of the soul in the here-andnow. As such, bringing into view one’s own death is one way in which sincerity – that is, acting for the sake of God rather than for the sake of self – may be secured and preserved. O my companions in the service of the Quran! One of the most effective means of attaining and preserving sincerity is “contemplation of death.” Yes, like it is worldly ambition that damages sincerity and drives a person to hypocrisy and the world, so it is contemplation of death that causes disgust at hypocrisy and gains sincerity. That is, to think of death and realize that this world is transient, and so be saved from the tricks of the soul. Yes, through the instruction the Sufis and people of truth received from verses of the All-Wise Quran such as Every soul shall taste death 38 and Truly you will die [one day], and truly they [too] will die [one day],39 they made the contemplation of death fundamental to their spiritual journeyings, and dispelled the illusion of eternity, the source of worldly ambition. They imagined and conceived of themselves as dead and being placed in the grave. Through prolonged thought the evil-commanding soul becomes saddened and affected by such imagining and to an extent gives up its far-reaching ambitions and hopes. There are numerous advantages in this contemplation. The Hadith the meaning of which is “Frequently mention death which dispels pleasure and makes it bitter”11 teaches this contemplation. However, since our way is not the Sufi path but the way of reality, we are not compelled to perform this contemplation in an imaginary and hypothetical form like the Sufis. To do so is anyway not in conformity with the way of reality. Our way is not to bring the future to the present by thinking of the end, but to go in the mind to the future from the present in respect of reality, and to gaze on it. Yes, having no need of imagination

415

The Qur’an Revealed  or conception, one may look on one’s own corpse, the single fruit on the tree of this brief life. In this way, one may look on one’s own death, and if one goes a bit further, one can see the death of this century, and going further still, observe the death of this world, opening up the way to complete sincerity.40

Sincerity may also be attained and preserved, Nursi suggests, by cultivating huz.  ūr al-qalb. Translated literally as ‘presence of heart’, huz.  ūr al-qalb entails internalisation of the fact that God is Omnipresent, All-Seeing and All-Hearing, and that, to paraphrase the Quran, even an atom’s weight of good or bad does not escape the attention of the Divine. To attain a sense of the Divine presence through the strength of certain, verified belief and through the lights proceeding from reflective thought on creatures which leads to knowledge of the Maker; to realise that the Compassionate Creator is all-present and seeing; to eschew the attention of any other than He, and to know that looking to others in His presence or seeking help from them is contrary to right conduct in His presence – all of these may save a man from hypocrisy and gain him sincerity. However, there are many degrees and stages in this. However much a person may profit from his share, it is profit. Numerous truths are mentioned in the Risale-i Nur which will save a person from hypocrisy and gain him sincerity, so referring him to those, we cut short the discussion here.41

Threats to sincerity

Having suggested how sincerity may be secured and preserved, Nursi then cautions his students to be on their guard against obstacles which may threaten to destroy it. The first, he writes, is rivalry with regard to material advantage. This is also detrimental to the results of our service. So too it causes the material benefits to be lost. This nation has always nurtured respect for those who work for reality and the Hereafter, and assisted them. With the intention of actively sharing in their genuine sincerity and in the works they carry out devotedly, it has always showed respect by assisting them with material benefits like alms and gifts so that they should not become preoccupied with securing their material needs and wasting their time. But this assistance and benefit may not be sought; it is given. It may not even be sought through the tongue of disposition by desiring it with the heart or expecting it. It should rather be given when unexpected, otherwise sincerity will be harmed. It also approaches the prohibition of the verse Nor sell my signs for a small price 42 and in part destroys the action.43

Service for the sake of God should, Nursi emphasises, be undertaken without any expectation of material reward. Muslim scholars working tirelessly in the name of God and in order to facilitate the dissemination of His message have always received support from the believing masses, be it in the form of gifts or charitable donations. This, Nursi says, has allowed such individuals to concentrate on their duties of teaching and guidance rather than having to seek a living by doing a job which may take up too much of their time and, as a consequence, deplete their energy and detract from their mission. However, such support must neither be actively sought nor passively expected, for this will harm sincerity. It will harm sincerity because it will in effect professionalise religious scholarship and lead to the formation of a

416

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood salaried clerical class. And while such a class is hardly conspicuous by its absence in Muslim history, it is clear that in Nursi’s opinion, the existence of a wage-earning scholarly elite is inimical to the spirit of learning and teaching in the Quran; this much may be inferred clearly from the Quranic verse cited by Nursi in support of his argument - Nor sell my signs for a small price (2:41). Once religious guidance has donned a professional garb, sincerity comes under threat, since with the formation of a clerical class comes hierarchization – the dangers of which are by its very nature more deleterious for the sincerity of Muslim scholars than it is for those such as the ‘people of misguidance’ who are engaged in mundane affairs rather than affairs of belief and the hereafter. Even in the absence of formal hierarchization of religious scholarship, expectation of reward brings with it the possibility of negative and damaging competition. Thus, first desiring and expecting such a material benefit, then so as not to allow it to go to someone else, the evil-commanding soul selfishly excites a feeling of rivalry towards a true brother and companion in that particular service. Sincerity is damaged, and the sacredness of the service is lost, and the person becomes disagreeable in the eyes of the people of reality. He also loses the material benefit. This subject bears much discussion. However, I shall cut it short and only mention two examples which will strengthen sincerity and true union between my true brothers.44

In order that they may preserve their sincerity and strengthen the bonds which unite them, Nursi provides his students with two pertinent examples. ‘The worldly,’ and even certain politicians and secret societies and manipulators of society, have taken as their guide the principle of shared property in order to obtain great wealth and power. They acquire an extraordinary strength and advantage, despite all their exploitation and losses. However, the nature of common property does not change with sharing, despite its considerable harm. Although each partner is as though the owner and supervisor of the rest in one respect, he cannot profit from this. Nevertheless, if this principle of shared property is applied to works pertaining to the Hereafter, it accumulates vast benefits which produce no loss. For it means that all the property passes to the hands of each partner. For example, there are four or five men. With the idea of sharing, one of them brings paraffin, another a wick, another the lamp, another the mantle, and the fifth matches; they assemble the lamp and light it. Each of them becomes the owner of a complete lamp. If each of those partners has a full-length mirror on a wall, he will be reflected in it together with the lamp and room, without deficiency or being split up. It is exactly the same with mutual participation in the goods of the Hereafter through the mystery of sincerity, and co-operation through the mystery of brotherhood, and joint enterprise through the mystery of unity - the total obtained through those joint acts, and all the light, enters the book of good deeds of each of those taking part. This is a fact and has been witnessed by the people of reality. It is also required by the breadth of Divine mercy and munificence.45

When two or more individuals form a consortium in order to acquire property, none of the individual members of the group can lay claim to all of the profits it may yield: despite the fact that each investor may feel that he or she is owner of a great asset, the fact remains

417

The Qur’an Revealed  that any benefit which accrues to the group will have to be shared, as will any loss. As far as the ‘goods of the hereafter’ are concerned, however, the pooling together of spiritual resources in a spirit of sincerity will earn the partners a ‘property’ over which, since it is immaterial and pertains to the hereafter, each may exercise complete ownership. Given that it is towards the ‘goods of the hereafter’ that the students of the Risale should be working, Nursi writes, it follows that material benefits in this world should not provoke rivalry among them: how, he asks, can some minor merit in this world be compared with the merit to be had from works which are carried out for the sake of infinite benefit in the Hereafter? Nursi’s second example is in a similar vein: Craftsmen are obtaining significant wealth through co-operating in order to profit more from the products of their crafts. Formerly ten men who made sewing needles all worked on their own, and the fruit of their individual labour was three needles a day. Then in accordance with the rule of joint enterprise the ten men united. One brought the iron, one lit the furnace, one pierced the needles, one placed them in the furnace, and another sharpened the points, and so on... each was occupied with only part of the process of the craft of needle-making. Since the work in which he was employed was simple, time was not wasted, he gained skill, and performed the work with considerable speed. Then they divided up the work which had been in accordance with the rule of joint enterprise and the division of labour: they saw that instead of three needles a day, it worked out at three hundred for each man. This event was widely published among the craftsmen of ‘the worldly’ in order to encourage them to pool their labour. And so, my brothers! Since union and accord in the matters of this world and in dense materials yield such results and huge total benefits, you can compare how vastly profitable it is for each to reflect in his own mirror through Divine grace the light of all, which is luminous and pertains to the Hereafter and does not need to be divided up and fragmented, and to gain the equivalent reward of all of them. This huge profit should not be lost through rivalry and insincerity.46

The second threat to sincerity mentioned by Nursi is the desire that some students of the Risale-i Nur exhibit for status and public renown. Such a desire is, he argues, toxic to the spirit since it opens the door to egoism and hypocrisy – both harbingers of a subtle form of associationism (shirk), or the attribution of partners to God. When the desire for fame and acclaim take hold of a believer’s heart, Nursi says, sincerity is usually the first casualty. My brothers! Our way in the service of the Quran is reality and brotherhood, and the true meaning of brotherhood is to annihilate one’s personality among one’s brothers and to prefer their souls to one’s own soul. Rivalry of this sort arising from desire for rank and position should not therefore be provoked. It is altogether opposed to our way. The brothers’ honour may be all the individuals’ generally; so I am hopeful that sacrificing that great collective honour for personal, selfish, competitive, minor fame and renown is far from being something the Risale-i Nur students would do. Yes, the heart, mind and spirit of the Risale-i Nur students would not stoop to lowly, harmful, inferior things like that. But everyone has an evil-commanding soul, and sometimes the soul’s emotions influence certain veins of character, and govern to an extent in spite of the heart, mind and spirit; I am not accusing your hearts, minds and spirits. I have confidence in you because of the

418

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood effect of the Risale-i Nur. But the soul, desires, emotions and imagination sometimes deceive. For this reason you sometimes receive severe warnings. This severity looks to the soul, emotions, desires and imagination; act cautiously. Yes, if our way had been that of subjection to a shaykh, there would have been a single rank, or limited ranks, and numerous capacities would have been appointed to them. There could have been envy and selfishness. But our way is brotherhood. There can be no position of father among brothers, nor can they assume the position of spiritual guide. The rank in brotherhood is broad; it cannot be the cause of envious jostling. At most brother helps and supports brother; he completes his service. Evidence that much harm and many mistakes have resulted from the envy, greed for spiritual reward, and high aspirations of the paths of spiritual guides are the conflict and rivalry among those who follow the Sufi path - their vast and significant attainments, perfections and benefits which have had the disastrous consequence of that vast and sacred power of theirs being unable to withstand the gales of innovation.47

The body of students who tread the path of the Risale-i Nur is cemented by brotherhood, Nursi says, and there can be no notion of a primus inter pares, or ‘first among equals’ within the Nur community. No student of the Risale or devotee to its mission is superior to another: there is no ‘Master-disciple’ relationship as may be found among the various Sufi paths and thus there can be no vying for position or attention. Nor – in theory – can there be envy for rewards given for service to the Quran and to the mission of the Risale-i Nur which pertain not to this world but, rather, to the world of the hereafter: the notion of greed for spiritual – that is, supra-material – reward is meaningless, and students of the Risale should realise that their duty is to complement their brothers’ efforts rather than to compete with them.

Unity and the students of the Risale-i Nur Some of the Risale-i Nur students have acted like the groups within the Islamic community, the same as everywhere and as is permitted by the laws of the Republic, and this has been supposed to be a society. But the intention of those three or four students was not some sort of political society; it was purely sincere brotherhood in the service of belief and a solidarity which looks to the hereafter.48 We have absolutely no connection with any worldly, political, scheming society or clandestine group, or the covert organizations concerning which on no grounds whatsoever have we been charged; we do not condescend to such things. 49

Nursi alludes to the charges levelled against him and his disciples and readers – charges of which he was always acquitted – to stress that if those who follow his teachings unite as a group, it is for the sake of the dissemination of truth rather than for the furthering of some political cause or the realisation of some worldly ambition. If a few Nur students have acted in a manner that suggests otherwise, he says, not only have they done so within the confines of the law, but they have done so for the sake of brotherhood, and not for the sake of selfaggrandizement or material gain. The students of the Risale-i Nur, themselves one of the many groups which make up the ‘sacred, vast’ society that is the world community of Muslims, may indeed have the same overall aim, but they often differ considerably in outlook and approach. Nursi was

419

The Qur’an Revealed  certainly astute enough to realise that, like the Muslim umma itself, the Nur Cemaati – the community of students of the Risale – would share the same overall aims but would not be monolithic in its approach. Following Nursi’s death in 1960, the body of students and followers of Nursi’s work and mission fragmented into a number of sub-communities, with different ideas on how the Risale should be studied, interpreted and disseminated, and, in some cases, with considerably divergent opinions on socio-political issues and the question of Nurcu engagement with politics and the state. Nursi’s prescience of the distinct likelihood that the community of students dedicated to the Risale would divide into different groups with different approaches and outlooks is something that is clear from his discourse on the dangers which attend the loss of sincerity, and particularly so in those passages in which he addresses his students directly. ON BROTHERHOOD Verily the believers are brethren; so reconcile then your brothers. 50 Repel evil with what is better than it; then the one between whom and yourself enmity prevails will become like your friend and intimate. 51 Those who suppress their anger and forgive people-verily God loves those who do good. 52

If sincerity is the leaven which works on an individual level to imbue all actions performed by a believer with sacrality, brotherhood is the element which works on a societal level to provide mutual assistance and support for the commonalty of believers, both as individuals and as fellow members of the single society that is the community of Islam. While the Quran asserts that all believers are brothers, it does not follow on necessarily that they will always act as such. It is their failure to live up to the requirements of brotherhood which Nursi addresses in his teachings on the dangers of mutual hostility among believers, the need to avoid enmity at all costs – or at least mitigate its harmful consequences -, and the moral imperative of unity. For in Nursi’s view, there is nothing more harmful for the personal, spiritual and social lives of Muslim believers than dispute, discord, biased partisanship and envy – all of which lead to enmity and mutual hostility, which he sees as toxic for humankind. Rancour and enmity directed against fellow believers are impermissible, he argues, for the simple reason that they are conducive neither to truth nor to justice. Let us suppose that you were on a ship, or in a house, with nine innocent people and one criminal. If, in order to do away with that criminal, someone were to try to make the ship sink, or to set the house on fire, you know how great a sinner he would be. You would cry out to the heavens against his sinfulness. Even if there were one innocent man and nine criminals aboard the ship, it would be against all the rules of justice to sink it. So too, if there are in the person of a believer, who may be compared to a dominical dwelling, a Divine ship, not nine, but as many as twenty innocent attributes such as belief, Islam and neighbourliness; and if you then nurture rancour and enmity against him on account of one criminal attribute that harms and displeases you, attempting or desiring the sinking of his being, the burning of his house, then you too will be a criminal guilty of a great atrocity.53

420

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood A believer may dislike an aspect of another believer’s character, but to harbour enmity towards him or her on account of a single negative trait – to ‘sink the ship’ of that person’s character on account of one blameworthy attribute among twenty laudable ones - is to commit a gross injustice. In this analogy between the ship and the human soul we catch a tantalising glimpse of what it meant in Nursi’s eyes to be just. For Nursi, compassion, as arguably one of the most pervasive of Divine attributes, is not only a pillar of creation but also the keystone of justice, both in its Divine and societal manifestations. Unlike the instrumentalist and utilitarian approaches, which look upon justice as merely another set of rules upon which rational beings agree in order to maximise their self-interest, the Nursian approach is one which emphasises the inviolability of the rights of the individual and the imperative to protect at all costs those who are innocent. Nursi could never accept the utilitarian maxim that ‘the end justifies the means’; he was never able to give credence to the notion that an action may be justified if it maximises happiness for the majority at the cost of the felicity of the minority. In the context of his analogy, one may argue – as no doubt a utilitarian would – that to sink a ship which contains a mass murderer and nineteen innocent people would be justifiable. After all, were we not to sink the ship, the murderer may disembark and continue to kill; indeed, he may go on to murder many more people than would have perished on the ship had we decided to sink it. For the utilitarian, the sacrifice of nineteen people for the sake of saving possibly twice or three times that number is rationally justifiable and totally in keeping with the instrumentalist approach to justice. From Nursi’s teleological view of justice, however, a consequentialist solution to the problem of the murderer on the ship is not, and can never be, viable. Without his consent, Nursi asserts, an innocent person may never be sacrificed for ‘the greater good’, even though that ‘greater good’ be the saving of the whole human race. Nor is it possible to direct enmity against a brother believer’s single negative attribute while simultaneously claiming to love him on account of his numerous praiseworthy traits. Since love and hate are diametrically opposed, it is impossible to nurture both in one’s heart with regard to a fellow believer. For it is obvious that enmity and love are opposites, just like light and darkness; while maintaining their respective essences, they cannot be combined. If love is truly found in a heart, by virtue of the predomination of the causes that produce it, then enmity in that heart can only be metaphorical, and takes on the form of compassion. The believer loves and should love his brother, and is pained by any evil he sees in him. He attempts to reform him not with harshness but gently. It is for this reason that the Tradition of the Prophet says, “No believer should be angered with another and cease speaking to him for more than three days.” If the causes that produce enmity predominate, and true enmity takes up its seat in a heart, then the love in that heart will become metaphorical, and take on the form of artifice and flattery.54

For Nursi, then, real enmity directed against a fellow believer on account of some evil that he may have committed is inimical to true brotherhood: if enmity is to be felt at all, it should be directed at the act rather than the agent. Nursi’s approach here is evocative of the Christian ideal which directs man to ‘love the sinner but not the sin’. The fact that a fellow believer has strayed from the path should be the cause not for hostility but for pity and compassionate

421

The Qur’an Revealed  guidance. If love for one’s fellow believer is true love, there will be no room in the same heart for rancour, and any enmity that is felt will be metaphorical only. Conversely, if enmity takes hold of one’s heart and predominates, any love that is expressed towards a fellow believer will be forced and hypocritical. Moreover, given what they hold in common, there can be no-one closer to a believer than another believer; for this reason alone, to harbour enmity towards him is considered by Nursi to be a sin of considerable magnitude. O unjust man! See now what a great sin is rancour and enmity toward a brother believer! If you were to say that ordinary small stones are more valuable than the Ka‘ba and greater than Mount Uhud, it would be an ugly absurdity. So too, belief which has the value of the Ka‘ba, and Islam which has the splendour of Mount Uhud, as well as other Islamic attributes, demand love and concord. But if you prefer over belief and Islam certain shortcomings which arouse hostility, but which in reality are like the small stones, you too will be engaging in great injustice, foolishness and sin! The unity of belief necessitates also the unity of hearts, and the oneness of our creed demands the oneness of our society. You cannot deny that if you find yourself in the same regiment as someone, you will form a friendly attachment to him: a brotherly relation will come into being as a result of your both being submitted to the orders of a single commander. You will similarly experience a fraternal relation through living in the same town with someone. Now there are ties of unity, bonds of union and relations of fraternity as numerous as the Divine Names that are shown and demonstrated to you by the light and consciousness of belief. Your Creator, Owner, Object of Worship and Provider is one and the same for both of you; thousands of things are one and the same for you. Your Prophet, your religion, your qibla are one and the same; hundreds of things are one and the same for you. Then too your village is one, your state is one, your country is one; tens of things are one and the same for you. All of these things held in common dictate oneness and unity, union and concord, love and brotherhood, and indeed the cosmos and the planets are similarly interlinked by unseen chains. If, despite all this, you prefer things worthless and transient as a spider’s web that give rise to dispute and discord, to rancour and enmity, and engage in true enmity towards a believer, then you will understand - unless your heart is dead and your intelligence extinguished - how great is your disrespect for that bond of unity, your slight to that relation of love, your transgression against that tie of brotherhood!55

Enmity and the ‘association fallacy’

Having established that to harbour enmity in one’s heart towards a fellow believer – for whatever reason – is akin to sinking a ship full of people in order to kill the one criminal on board, and having concluded that believers hold too much in common to harbour enmity and hostility towards one another, Nursi then addresses the issue of ‘guilt by association’. To nurture rancour and enmity towards a believer is like condemning all the innocent attributes found in him on account of one criminal attribute, and is hence an act of great injustice. If you go further and include in your enmity all the relatives of a believer on account of a single evil attribute of his, then you will have committed a still greater sin and

422

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood transgression, against which truth, the Shari’a and the wisdom of Islam combine to warn you. How then can you imagine yourself to be in the right and say: “I am in the right”? 56

Nursi cites the verse No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another 57 as the Quranic support for his argument. Evil, which has no objective reality beyond the confines of the intention of its perpetrator, is not something which can be passed from person to person like a virus; nor is it a genetic trait that can be transferred from parent to child. In the view of truth, the cause for enmity and all forms of evil is in itself evil and is dense like clay: it cannot infect or pass on to others. If someone learns from it and commits evil, that is another question. Good qualities that arouse love are luminous like love; it is part of their function to be transmitted and produce effects. It is for this reason that the proverb has come into being, “The friend of a friend is a friend,” and also that it is said, “Many eyes are beloved on account of one eye.” So O unjust man! If such be the view of truth, you will understand now, if you have the capacity for seeing the truth, how great an offence it is to cherish enmity for the likeable and innocent brothers and relatives of a man you dislike.58

The self-destructive nature of enmity caused by envy

When a believer harbours enmity in his heart for brother believers, he commits an injustice not only with regard to those whom he hates but also with regard to his own soul, particularly, Nursi asserts, when that enmity has its basis in envy. Those who cherish rancour and enmity transgress against their own souls, their brother believer, and Divine mercy. For such a person condemns his soul to painful torment with his rancour and enmity. He imposes torment on his soul whenever his enemy receives some bounty, and pain from fear of him. If his enmity arises from envy, then it is the most severe form of torment. For envy in the first place consumes and destroys the envier, while its harm for the one envied is either slight or nonexistent.59

Envy has little or no effect on the one envied, but can be disastrous for the one who envies. It is disastrous because it gives the envier a feeling of deprivation when he is not actually deprived: his pain stems not so much from the fact that he himself lacks something as from the fact that his enemy has been blessed with good fortune or a particular bounty. This sense of deprivation, and the enmity it engenders, can reach such proportions that one can no longer be satisfied with, or grateful for, anything one has. This is particularly unfortunate for the believer in such a situation, for his salvation depends partly on the degree to which he is satisfied with what he has been given and grateful for the bounties with which he has been blessed. Nursi’s suggestions as to how a believer might approach the problem of envy are incisive and pragmatic. Let the envious reflect on the ultimate fate of those things that arouse his enmity. Then he will understand that the beauty, strength, rank and wealth possessed by his rival are transient and temporary. Their benefit is slight and the anxiety they cause is great. If it is a question of personal qualities that will gain him reward in the hereafter, they cannot be an object of envy. But if one does envy another on account of them, then he is either

423

The Qur’an Revealed  himself a hypocrite, wishing to destroy the goods of the hereafter while yet in this world, or he imagines the one whom he envies to be a hypocrite, thus being unjust towards him. If he rejoices at the misfortunes he suffers and is grieved by the bounties he receives, it is as if he is offended by the kindness shown towards him by Divine Determining and Divine Mercy, as if he were criticizing and objecting to them. Whoever criticizes Divine Determining is striking his head against an anvil on which it will break, and whoever objects to Divine Mercy will himself be deprived of it.60

To facilitate a cure for envy, Nursi suggests that those who have this trait should try to see beyond appearances and deliberate carefully upon what it is, exactly, that is provoking such feelings. Firstly, to covet the physical attributes or material possessions that someone else has is to hanker after the ephemeral: beauty, status, wealth and power are all fleeting things which often bring more suffering than they do contentment. Furthermore, it often happens that when one digs a little more deeply into the lives of those who appear to have been blessed with such things, one finds that all is not as it seems. When one sees the whole of another person’s life, and not just those aspects which arouse envy, one may discover flaws and weaknesses one could never have imagined: that person may have an undisclosed illness, a miserable marriage, rebellious children, numerous enemies, and so on. One may find that although they possess things which arouse envy, they have had to endure challenges and hardships beyond anything that those who envy them have experienced. Paradoxically, it often turns out that one who appears to have everything, and is therefore the object of envy, is actually himself envious of those who covet what he possesses. If that which is envied is not a material possession but, rather, a laudable character trait – patience, for example, or honesty – then the envious must consider that they are resenting a person for something which cannot, by its very nature, be the object of envy. Firstly, qualities such as patience and honesty are supra-material and may, unlike finite material objects, be attained equally by all. Secondly, qualities such as these are, if used with the right intention, means whereby one may gain salvation in the hereafter: to envy another on account of such means and to wish that they were not in his possession is tantamount to desiring that person’s ultimate destruction. Again, such resentment is injurious not to those who are envied but to the souls of those who envy. Moreover, to feel anger when bounties appear to fall into the laps of others is to rail against the principle of Divine Decree and Determining (qadar), and as such constitutes a blatant criticism of God’s wisdom and will. And, as Nursi says, those who criticize God on account of the manner in which Divine grace is made manifest will ultimately be deprived of it themselves.

On defusing enmity against fellow believers

Nursi’s prescription for the eradication – or, at least, neutralization – of the enmity a believer may feels towards fellow believers on account of some perceived evil he may have suffered at their hands – is as no-nonsense as his prescribed cure for envy. If probed, he says, a sound conscience will see no sense whatsoever in harbouring for years a grudge or nurturing feelings of hostility towards a fellow believer, simply on account of something which is not worth even a day’s consideration. To condemn a fellow believer in this way is wrong, Nursi asserts, on a number of levels. To defuse the enmity which leads to such condemnation, one

424

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood needs to consider a number of factors which contribute to the existence of the perceived evil; if understood properly and accepted, these may help to defuse the enmity or eradicate it completely. You cannot condemn a brother believer for some evil you experience at his hand for the following reasons. Firstly, Divine Determining has a certain share of responsibility. It is necessary to deduct that share from the total and respond to it with contentment and satisfaction. Secondly, the share of the soul and Satan should also be deducted, and one should pity the man for having been overcome by his soul and await his repentance instead of becoming his enemy. Thirdly, look at the defect in your own soul that you do not see or do not wish to see; deduct a share for that too. As for the small share which then remains, if you respond with forgiveness, pardon and magnanimity, in such a way as to conquer your enemy swiftly and safely, then you will have escaped all sin and harm. But if, like some drunken and crazed person who buys up fragments of glass and ice as if they were diamonds, you respond to worthless, transient, temporary and insignificant happenings of this world with violent enmity, permanent rancour and perpetual hostility, as if you were going to remain in the world with your enemy for all eternity, it would be extreme transgression, sinfulness, drunkenness and lunacy.61

When Nursi says that Divine Determining (qadar) has a certain share of the responsibility, he is saying that what is perceived to be the objectionable behaviour of a fellow believer could not have actually occurred without being brought into external existence through God’s exercising of His Will. Man proposes, God disposes: while the Creator may not sanction the intention behind an individual’s act, it is He Who is responsible for the actual bringing of the act into being and its inclusion in the creational scheme, for reasons that are consonant with Divine wisdom, but which may not be apparent, particularly to those who are affected negatively by it. Insofar as the unacceptable behaviour of a brother believer is included within those things willed by God, one has no option, Nursi avers, but to respond to it with contentment, safe in the knowledge – however difficult it may be, at first, to comprehend - that it is underpinned by wisdom and purpose. The second contributory factor, Nursi says, is the fallibility of the fellow believer himself, and his susceptibility to the insinuations of his own evil-commanding soul. Believers are no less human than anyone else: they make mistakes - sometimes disastrously so - and may offend, injure or alienate others in the process. Instead of harbouring hate for a fellow believer on account of acts which issue from him because he has succumbed to the dictates of his lower self, one should instead cultivate a sense of compassion towards him and hope that he is able to overcome the obstacles which have led him to make such mistakes. The third factor that an aggrieved believer must take into account, Nursi writes, is the fact that he too may have defects in his soul which may jaundice his judgement of his fellow believer. It often happens that one hates in others those very qualities or behaviours that one has in one’s own character, but which one is unable or unwilling to see. One must therefore take into account one’s own failings before condemning those of fellow believers with such alacrity. Nursi’s prescription here is evocative of the Biblical precept which cautions the individual against drawing attention to the speck of sawdust which exists in his brother’s eye while ignoring the plank which exists in his own.62

425

The Qur’an Revealed  Once all three factors are understood and accepted, Nursi suggests, feelings of enmity should subside, if not disappear altogether. If a believer cares for his own salvation, he will not allow hostility and resentment to enter his heart. And if it does, he should neither internalise it nor act upon it. Whatever resentment remains once these three factors have been taken into consideration should, Nursi says, be countered with forgiveness, for as the poet H .   āfiz.   of Shiraz writes, ‘The world is not a commodity worth fighting over; the tranquillity of this world and the next lies in these principles: generosity towards friends and forbearance towards foes.’

On dealing with intractable enmity

Nursi then hypothesizes a situation in which the aggrieved party is unable to dislodge the enmity he feels in his heart towards his fellow believer. If one feels unable to overlook those who have wronged him, what is he to do? Nursi’s solution is, as one has come to expect, a pragmatic and realistic one, eschewing the kind of rigid moralism that one might expect in response to a case of intractable enmity. If evil character and bad disposition do not exhibit any trace, and you do not act with ill intention, there is no harm; if you have no choice in the matter, then you are unable to abandon your enmity. But if you recognize your defect and understand that you are wrong to have that attribute, it will be a form of repentance and seeking of forgiveness for you, thus delivering you from its evil effects. In fact, we have written this treatise partly in order to make possible such a seeking of forgiveness, to distinguish right from wrong, and to prevent enmity from being displayed as justified.63 If you wish to nourish enmity, then direct it against the enmity in your heart, and attempt to rid yourself of it. Be an enemy to your evil-commanding soul and its caprice and attempt to reform it, for it inflicts more harm on you than all else. Do not engage in enmity against other believers on account of that injurious soul. Again, if you wish to cherish enmity, there are unbelievers and atheists in great abundance: nurture hostility towards their path. In the same way that the attribute of love is fit to receive love as its response, so too enmity will receive enmity as its own fitting response. If you wish to defeat your enemy, then respond to his evil with good. For if you respond with evil, enmity will increase, and even though he will be outwardly defeated, he will nurture hatred in his heart, and hostility will persist. But if you respond to him with good, he will repent and become your friend. The meaning of the lines If you treat the noble nobly, he will be yours, and if you treat the vile nobly, he will revolt 8 is that it is the mark of the believer to be noble, and he will become submitted to you by noble treatment. And even if someone is apparently ignoble, he is noble with respect to his belief. It often happens that if you tell an evil man, “You are good, you are good,” he will become good; and if you tell a good man, “You are bad, you are bad,” he will become bad. Pay attention, therefore, to these sacred principles of the Quran, for happiness and safety are to be found in them: If they pass by futility, they pass by it in honourable disdain. 64 If you forgive, pardon, and relent, verily God is All-Relenting, Merciful.65  66

From Nursi’s counsel one sees that he was well aware that not even believers are immune from feelings of rancour and resentment that refuse to be subdued. If enmity is entrenched

426

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood to the point that it simply cannot be dislodged, he says, then so long as it does not find external expression, no substantial external harm will be done. Nevertheless, hatred can never sit happily in a believer’s heart, and therefore even if he is unable to eradicate it, he must acknowledge that it is a serious character defect. Such acknowledgement will act as a form of repentance, thus mitigating the damage that harbouring such hatred causes to the human heart. That Nursi refuses to condemn the believer for his inability to eradicate completely the enmity he feels in his heart demonstrates the extent to which he is influenced in his psycho-spiritual counselling by the precepts of the Quran on social justice. Here, for example, one is reminded of the Quranic principle of qis.ās.. Translated rather sensationally as the ‘eye-for-an-eye’ rule, qis.ās. or the ‘rule of equivalency’ permits retaliation in cases where someone has deliberately and unjustly wounded, mutilated or killed someone else. O ye who believe! the law of equality is prescribed to you in cases of murder: the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the woman for the woman. But if any remission is made by the brother of the slain, then grant any reasonable demand, and compensate him with handsome gratitude, this is a concession and a Mercy from your Lord. After this whoever exceeds the limits shall be in grave penalty .67

To meet a threat with a threat is a basic response, and, as such, is fundamental to the emotional and physical defence mechanisms which exist to protect man as an individual and humankind as a species. In instituting the principle of qis.ās., the Quran acknowledges that the desire for revenge is part of man’s creational make-up and accommodates it by giving it a legitimate outlet. However, if the relatives of the murder victim wish, they may forgive the murderer, on the proviso that he provide them with reasonable compensation for the loss of their slain relative. Indeed, implicit in the above verse is the fact that the dispensation of forgiveness is in one very important sense preferable to the exaction of revenge, although it is clear that revenge is by no means blameworthy: there will always be individuals who are able to come to terms with situations such as the murder of a loved one only if the perpetrator is punished for the crime. To observe forgiveness, however, when one might just as easily have sanctioned punishment, is to transcend the urge for revenge and, in so doing, reflect Divine compassion, which is, according to a Prophetic Tradition, said to be prevail over Divine wrath. The observation of forgiveness, particularly in the case of murder, clearly requires the will to defy what appears to be a hard-wired feature of human psychological make-up. However, the claim that revenge is ‘in-built’ does not imply that forgiveness is, to quote a renowned social psychologist, ‘a thin veneer of civility that we slap on top of an unwilling, brutish, fundamentally vengeful core.’ 68 Our capacity to forgive is every bit as fundamental to our creational make-up as our capacity for revenge, although clearly the extent to which these capacities are drawn on differs from individual to individual and according to circumstance. That the exercise of forgiveness is somehow more exalted, however, would seem to be supported not only by the Tradition cited earlier but also by the verse itself. The option to dispense forgiveness as part of the ‘law of equality’ is described as both a ‘concession’ (takhf īf) and a ‘mercy’ (rah. ma) from God. The word takhf īf also connotes ‘alleviation’, and

427

The Qur’an Revealed  in the case of a pardoned murderer it alludes clearly to the lightening of his burden, thanks to the magnanimity of his victim’s relatives. However, it can just as easily be understood as an allusion to the easing of one’s psychological load that comes when true forgiveness is dispensed. And it is not difficult to understand how the whole process of forgiveness is equated with ‘mercy’, both for the pardoner as well as the pardoned. Nursi, of course, is concerned here not with the enmity that the relatives of a murder victim feel towards the murderer but with the resentment and hostility which a believer harbours towards a fellow believer on account of some perceived affront or transgression. Resentment and hostility, however warranted they appear to be on the surface, may, as Nursi shows, be eased through awareness of the various factors which may have contributed to the sense of grievance, but they can never be justified or sanctioned. If a believer is unable to rid himself of such feelings through a true understanding of their real causes, then according to Nursi he should either channel his enmity in the direction of something that is really deserving of condemnation - unbelief, for example – or he should observe forgiveness and choose reconciliation. To continue to harbour hatred in one’s heart is more injurious to the one who hates than it is to the one who is hated. Rather than fan the flames of enmity by answering perceived evil with evil, it is better to respond with good and, in time, win over one’s enemy while lightening one’s own burden at the same time.

On enmity arising from partisanship

Partisanship is not an inherently negative word; nevertheless it is often understood to carry deeply pejorative undertones, signifying the approach of those who give fervent support to a party or a cause but who are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of truth or correctness in the views of their political or ideological opponents, regardless of circumstance or situation. Partisanship in its most extreme form connotes blind, prejudiced and unreasoning allegiance, and the kind of psychological and emotional investment in a particular way, idea or political approach which blinds the partisan to any of the virtues in his opponent’s position. The American historian James Harvey Robinson once wrote that “Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.” 69 It may be argued that Nursi would have concurred readily, believing as he did that partisanship – especially that of the obstinate kind – is extremely damaging to the social life of mankind. The one caveat that Nursi would have added, however, is that partisanship, while almost always biased, does not have to be. Nursi views the issue of partisanship through the prism of the Prophetic Tradition which has it that ‘Difference among my people is an instance of Divine Mercy.’ Some argue, he says, that difference is something which requires partisanship, for it is only through the confrontation of opinions and the polarity of views that truth becomes apparent. Furthermore, he says, partisanship is often valued highly as a means whereby the oppressed can find deliverance from the tyranny of the oppressor elite: if there is partisanship – in the form of different political factions – then the oppressed may find a source of refuge in allegiance to one of the parties and thus find a voice and a means of protection. Nursi responds to this approach to partisanship by elucidating the Tradition and differentiating between the kind of partisanship that is justified and the kind that is socially divisive.

428

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood The difference intended in the hadith is a positive difference. That is, each party strives to promote and diffuse its own belief; it does not seek to tear down and destroy that of the other, but rather to improve and reform it. If the confrontation of views takes place in the name of justice and for the sake of truth, then the difference concerns only means; there is unity with respect to aim and basic purpose. Such a difference makes manifest every aspect of the truth and serves justice and truth. Negative difference is rejected by the hadith, for it aims in partisan and hostile fashion at mutual destruction, and those who are at each other’s throats cannot act positively. But what emerges from a confrontation of views that is partisan and biased, and takes place for the sake of a tyrannical, evilcommanding soul, that is based on egotism and fame-seeking - what emerges from this is not the ‘flash of truth’ but the fire of dissension. Unity of aim is necessary, but opposing views of this kind can never find a point of convergence anywhere on earth. Since they do not differ for the sake of the truth, they multiply ad infinitum, and give rise to divergences that can never be reconciled. As for partisanship, if it is in the name of truth, it can become a refuge for those seeking their rights. But as for the partisanship obtaining now, biased and self-centred, it can only be a refuge for the unjust and a point of support for them. For if a devil comes to a man engaged in biased partisanship, encourages him in his ideas and takes his side, that man will call down God’s blessings on the Devil. But if the opposing side is joined by a man of angelic nature, then he will -may God protect us!- go so far as to invoke curses upon him.70

For Nursi, difference among the ‘people of truth’ is a mercy only so long as the expression of opposing views does not lead to mutual hostility. Similarly, partisanship can be justified only if it serves the cause of truth, in which case it may indeed act as a means of support for those who do not have the wherewithal to seek their rights unaided. However, the kind of partisanship which currently obtains, and which is fuelled for the most part by utilitarian motives rather than any consideration for the truth, is something which Nursi rejects. This ‘biased partisanship’, he says, is inherently dangerous because not only does it blind people to the ulterior motives of those who, on the surface, appear to be their champions and means of support, but it also blinds them to the truths which may exist in the approach of those with whom they are in disagreement and towards whom they harbour enmity. Such blind prejudice can be deleterious not only to the individual himself but also to society in general, and to the community of believers in particular. The dangers of biased partisanship are particularly acute today, Nursi argues, given that it is no longer as easy to separate the true from the false as it was in the past.71 I once saw, as a result of biased partisanship, a pious scholar of religion going so far in his condemnation of another scholar with whose political opinions he disagreed as to imply that he was an unbeliever. He also praised with respect a dissembler who shared his own opinions. I was appalled at these evil results of political involvement. I said: “I take refuge with God from Satan and politics,” and from that time on withdrew from politics.72 In short, if one does not make the exalted rule, “Love for the sake of God, dislike for the sake of God, judgement for the sake of God”12 the guiding principle of one’s conduct, dispute and discord will result. If one does not say, “Dislike for the sake of God,

429

The Qur’an Revealed  judgement for the sake of God” and take due account of those principles, one’s attempts to do justice will result in injustice.73

Enmity between believers on account of difference of opinion or outlook, Nursi argues, may also pose a threat to their belief and to their ultimate salvation. Spiritual life and correctness of worship will suffer as a result of enmity and rancour, since the purity of intention that is the means of salvation will be damaged. For a biased person will desire superiority over his enemy in the good deeds that he performs and will be unable to act purely for the sake of God. He will also prefer, in his judgement and dealings, the one who takes his side; he will be unable to be just. Thus the purity of intention and the justice that are the bases of all good acts and deeds will be lost on account of enmity and hostility.74

Brotherhood as a bulwark against external attack

As we have seen in the Introduction, believers are commanded by Divine revelation to unite in brotherhood first and foremost on account of the inherent desirability of unity as a moral virtue in and of itself. However, brotherhood among believers is also required by the dictates of reason, for it is only by means of unity that attacks from without may be countered and withstood. To forget and abandon internal enmities when foreign enemies appear and attack is a demand of social welfare recognized and enacted even by the most primitive peoples. What then ails those who claim to be serving the Muslim community that at a time when numberless enemies are taking up positions to attack, one after the other, they fail to forget their petty enmities, and instead prepare the ground for the enemies’ attacks? It is disgraceful savagery, and treason committed against the social life of Islam.75

Given the context in which he was writing, it is clear that the attacks to which Nursi alludes are to be understood as attacks on religion rather than any kind of physical encroachment on the Muslim world. Instead of uniting in order to wage a metaphorical war on what Nursi recognised as the slow, insidious infiltration of ideologies of unbelief into the heart of their society, Muslims were too busy attacking each other to realise how potentially disastrous to their collective future were these steadily increasing attacks from outside. There were once two groups of the Hasanan tribe who were hostile to each other. Although more than maybe fifty people had been killed on each side, when another tribe such as the Sipkan or Haydaran76 came out to attack them, those two hostile groups would forget their enmity and unite, fighting as allies until the opposing tribe had been repelled, without ever once recalling their internal dissensions. O Believers! Do you know how many tribes of enemies have taken up position to attack the tribe of the people of belief? There are more than a hundred of them, like a series of concentric circles. The believers are obliged to take up defensive positions, each supporting the other and giving him a helping hand. Is it then at all fitting for the people of belief that with their biased partisanship and hostile rancour they should facilitate the attack of the enemy and fling open the doors for him to penetrate the fold of Islam?

430

  On Sincerity and Brotherhood There are maybe seventy circles of enemies, including the misguided, the atheist and the unbeliever, each of them as harmful to you as all the terrors and afflictions of this world, and each of them regarding you with greed, anger and hatred. Your firm weapon, shield and citadel against all of them is none other than the brotherhood of Islam. So realize just how contrary to conscience and to the interests of Islam it is to shake the citadel of Islam on account of petty hostilities and other pretexts! Know this, and come to your senses!77

Be it through inability or unwillingness, the failure of Muslims – and particularly believing Muslims – to forge unity between themselves is bound, Nursi avers, to lead to their subjugation and subservience, on any of number of levels, according to context and circumstance. O people of faith! If you do not wish to enter a humiliating condition of slavery, come to your senses and enter and take refuge in the citadel of Indeed the believers are brothers 78 to defend yourselves against those oppressors who would exploit your differences! Otherwise you will be able neither to protect your lives nor to defend your rights. It is evident that if two champions are wrestling with each other, even a child can beat them. If two mountains are balanced in the scales, even a small stone can disturb their equilibrium and cause one to rise and the other to fall. People of belief! Your strength is reduced to nothing as a result of your passions and biased partisanships, and you can be defeated by the slightest forces. If you have any interest in your social solidarity, then know that the believers are together like a well-founded building, one part of which supports the other: make this your guiding principle in life. Only by doing so will you be delivered from humiliation in this world and wretchedness in the hereafter.79

It is worth noting that in Quranic terms, if true brotherhood is to obtain at all, it will obtain from shared belief; the Quran says that it is the believers – the mu’minūn – rather than the Muslims in general who are true brothers and capable of forging the most enduring kind of psycho-spiritual and social unity. There may indeed be one and a half billion Muslims in the world today, but true unity can come into existence only among Muslimbelievers : nominal inclusion in the fold of Islam without a basis in true belief can contribute little, if anything, to the unity needed in order to save the community of believers from the disarray which blights them on account of petty enmities and mutual hostility. Nevertheless, Nursi encourages the commonalty of Muslims by reminding them that the society they belong to – the society of Islam – is sacred, and that as such, their duty is to offer help wherever and whenever possible to their fellow members. Yes, we are a society and we are a society which now has a billion and half members. Every day through the five obligatory prayers, its members demonstrate with complete veneration their attachment to the principles of that sacred society. Through the sacred programme of The believers are but a single brotherhood,80 they hasten to assist one another with their prayers and spiritual gains. We are members of that sacred, vast society, and our particular duty is to teach the believers in certain, verified fashion the Quranic truths of belief, and save them and ourselves from eternal extinction and everlasting solitary confinement in the Intermediate Realm. 81

For Nursi, then, brotherhood is important as a means not to a material end but a spiritual one; unity is prescribed not in order to gain socio-political power but to secure psycho-

431

The Qur’an Revealed  spiritual purity. The Quran, Nursi contends, takes truth rather than force as its point of support, and virtue rather than material benefit as its aim. As far as societal dynamics are concerned, the Quran deems mutual assistance to be the key principle rather than conflict and mutual hostility. Its goal, he says, is to build a barrier against the whims, caprices and lusts of the concupiscent soul, to encourage the human spirit to aspire to elevated and sublime aims and, in showing him the way of perfection, make man into a true human being. The mark of truth, he says, is accord, while the mark of virtue is brotherhood. And brotherhood consists in hastening to give encouragement and support to those whose belief and goals are the same so that they may rein in their lower selves and urge their spirits forward towards happiness in this world and the next.82

432

Chapter Fourteen On Love Introduction

Love (mah. abba) is one of God’s primary attributes, and ‘the One Who loves’ is a name of God mentioned by the Quran. Why, then, do modern Muslim thinkers writing on theology tend on the whole to shun the topic? Is it because discussions about love, particularly with regard to God’s love, seem to them for the most part superficial and simplistic, relying on emotion rather than scripture or reason? Is it on account of the fact that the issue of love – of God’s love for His creation and His creation’s love for God – has traditionally been the domain of the Sufis and the mystics, and is therefore somehow already tainted by association and thus not worthy of serious theological consideration? Or is it because love is simply too slippery and elusive a concept upon which to get a firm intellectual grip? That discussions of love – and especially Divine love – can often appear to be grounded more in emotivism than rationality is undeniable. For example, despite the fact that the New Testament statement ‘God is love’ is the subject of serious theological study, in the context of popular Christianity it can at times appear to be little more than a pious platitude that one finds on coffee mugs or badges, or which is put on a plaque and hung on the wall. But the same cannot be said of Islam, although not because discussions about love among Muslims are not emotive or are never reduced to the merely platitudinous; the same cannot be said of Islam because discussions on love, at least in the context of popular religion, are largely conspicuous by their absence. While the issue of love in general, and Divine love in particular, has in the context of the Muslim intellectual tradition been largely the domain of mystical discourse, it is not a subject considered taboo by theologians in general. One can find intellectual explorations of the notion of Divine love in the works of the early theologians – the Ash’arites are a particularly salient example – as readily as one can in the works of the philosophers and the mystics. That the trend among theologians in general – and, again, among the Ash’arites in particular – was to treat the idea of a ‘loving God’ Who can be ‘loved’ in return with extreme caution, and at times with outright disdain, is a different issue: they may indeed

433

The Qur’an Revealed  have dismissed the claims of the Sufis, but they did not consider discussion of the subject outside their theological remit. With regard to the definitional problem facing anyone embarking on a study of love, it is true that the obstacles are considerable. Love is rather like time: one knows what it is until one is asked to define it. The diversity of ways in which the word can be used attests to its fluidity as a non-rational faculty whose domain is the human heart, and as something that no two human beings will experience in exactly the same way. Attempts to categorise it are legion, with some more successful than others. In Ancient Greek, for example, we find a division of love into five basic manifestations or aspects: agape, eros, philia, storge and xenia.1 Given the overlap between them, it has not always been easy to separate one from the other, although as schematizations go, it does help us grasp the conceptual differences between the different perceptions of love rather well. While Muslim scholarly tradition has never differentiated formulaically between the different kinds of love to the extent that the classical Greek scholars have, it does nevertheless make a distinction between the kinds of love that may be predicated of God and those which are to be predicated of man.2 There is thus no insuperable definitional obstacle facing contemporary Muslim writers should they wish to engage with this most understudied of issues. So why is so little written on love by modern Muslim writers on theology? It may well be that many of them find the subject of love too non-rational and definitionally ‘fuzzy’ an issue on which to write about with any cogency. Or it may be that they believe that modern Sufism’s monopoly on the discourse of love is so all-embracing that any attempts at a theological approach which do not adopt mystical or pseudo-mystical motifs will be considered inauthentic by Sufis, while an approach which does adopt such motifs will be rejected by the theological orthodoxy. An obvious, if somewhat cynical, conclusion to reach with regard to why so little is written on love by Muslims writing on theology today is precisely because they are Muslims writing on theology rather than Muslim theologians writing as theologians. As was pointed out in the general introduction to this book, the contemporary Muslim world of learning is not known for its overabundance of theological scholars, and the precious little that does emerge from their endeavours is devoted for the most part to revisiting the works of the old masters and covering fairly old ground. That is not to say that there is no innovative work being done on theological issues; indeed, the ‘updating’ of theology and the development of fresh theological paradigms are projects dear to the heart of many modern Muslim reformists. However, much of this work focuses on the interface of theology with law and legal theory, while traditional topics of theological study and speculation tend to get overlooked. Love – Divine love in particular – is one such topic. Given the abundance in the Quran of words which inhabit the same semantic field, or the fact that the attributes of mercy and compassion – both integral components of love – are invoked numerous times by Muslims in their daily devotions, it is rather surprising that love is virtually absent from mainstream theological discourse. For Said Nursi, however, there was no escaping either the centrality of love to the Quranic concept of God and creation or the fact that without a proper understanding of the role of love in the Creator-creature relationship, human felicity – be it in this world or the next - is at best problematic and at worst unfeasible. It is in Nursi’s understanding of the concept of love in the context of the Divine that we see once again

434

  On Love the difference between him and other mainstream theologians. It soon becomes apparent that Nursi writes with the heart of a mystic, although this should not lead us to construe his discourse on love as just another ‘Sufi love theory’. He may write with the heart of a mystic, but he also writes with the head of a pastoral theologian, particularly in his strictures against ‘misguided love’ – the kind of love that leads to spiritual perdition – and in his advice to believers on how love for ‘other than God’ can, through a process of reorientation, be sacralised and directed at the Divine.

Love as the reason for creation

That God created – and continues to create – the cosmos in order that he may be worshipped is clear from the Quranic verse I have not created jinn and men except to worship me, 3 and we have seen on a number of occasions how Nursi has invoked the famous ‘Hidden Treasure’ Tradition to elaborate upon the scriptural explanation of why all that is ‘other than God’ exists: I was a hidden treasure, so I created creation that they might know Me.

What this Tradition is actually saying, Nursi explains, is that God created the cosmos to be a mirror in which He might observe His beauty.4 That God’s names necessitate the existence of countless mirrors in which the infinite treasures of His Being may be reflected, both for His own admiration and the admiration of all that is ‘other than God’ has been explained in Chapter Two, and so there is no need to concern ourselves with the problem of the nature of the mirror here. Nursi’s aim is to show how one Divine quality leads us inexorably to the reality of another, and how this concatenation of names, attributes and actions is productive of meaning. Nursi begins with beauty and perfection: The Necessarily Existent One possesses infinite beauty and perfection, for all the varieties of them dispersed through the universe are the signs and indications of His beauty and perfection. Those who possess beauty and perfection clearly love them. Similarly, the All-Glorious One greatly loves His beauty, and He loves it in a way that befits Himself. Furthermore, He loves His names, which are the rays of His beauty, and since He loves them, He surely loves His art, which displays their beauty. In which case, He also loves His creatures, which are mirrors reflecting His beauty and perfection. Since He loves the creatures that display them, He certainly loves the creatures’ fine qualities, which point to the beauty and perfection of His names.5

Now according to a Prophetic Tradition, God is beautiful and He loves beauty. Beauty, like the rest of the names, requires ‘mirrors’ if it is to be observed, and the existence of Divine love means that it must be observed: that Beauty is loved implies that it is also seen, and that beauty is seen implies that there are ‘mirrors’ in which it is seen. And the existence of those mirrors is motivated by the force of love which not only appreciates in an absolute sense that beauty but also wills, by dint of that love, that beauty be made manifest. Again, as we saw in Chapter Two, God requires the existence of mirrors in which to observe His beauty, and the observation of His beauty is motivated by love. Moreover, Nursi maintains, all of the activity we observe in the phenomenal world – the constant flux and flow of existents and

435

The Qur’an Revealed  events – is underpinned by a ceaseless Divine activity that is fuelled – for want of a better term – by Divine love. Activity and motion in creatures arises from an appetite, a desire, a pleasure, a love. It may be said that in all activity is a sort of pleasure; indeed, it may be said that every activity is a sort of pleasure in itself. Pleasure too is turned towards a perfection; it is a sort of perfection even. Since activity indicates a perfection, a pleasure, a beauty; and since the Necessarily Existent One, Who is absolute perfection and the Perfect One of Glory, unites in His essence, attributes and Names every sort of perfection; for sure, in a manner fitting for the necessary existence and holiness of the Necessarily Existent Essence, in a form suitable to His absolute riches and the self-sufficiency of His essence, and in a way appropriate to His absolute perfection and freedom from defect, He has a boundless sacred compassion and infinite pure love. Undoubtedly there is an infinite holy eagerness arising from that sacred compassion and pure love, and from that holy eagerness arises an infinite sacred joy. And arising from that sacred joy is, if the term is permissible, an infinite holy pleasure. And from this holy pleasure and from the gratitude and perfections of creatures which result from the emergence and development of their potentialities within the activity of His power arise, if one may say so, an infinite sacred gratification and holy pride pertaining to that Most Merciful and Compassionate Essence. And it is these which necessitate a boundless activity. And that boundless activity in turn necessitates boundless change and transformation, alteration and destruction. And that boundless change and transformation necessitate death and extinction, decline and separation.6

While change and transformation do indeed necessitate decline and death, these are inevitable concomitants of the created state: they are woven into the fabric of the phenomenal world as instances of apparent non-existence which make existence known. As Nursi has shown elsewhere, without decline and death in the phenomenal world, entry to the everlasting world, a domain of the realm of the unseen, would not be possible. Just as the creation of this world is motivated by love, the creation of the world to come – which cannot be entered save through the gateway of decline and death – is also motivated by love. Indeed, love itself serves for Nursi as a proof of the reality of the hereafter, which is the ‘final cause’ or telos of life in the ‘here-and-now’: And could human reason in any way accept that an All-Powerful and All-Wise One Who is infinitely merciful, loving and compassionate, Who greatly loves His own art, makes Himself much loved, and loves greatly those who love Him, would condemn to everlasting death the life that loves Himself more than anything, is lovable and loved and by nature loves its Maker, condemn to death the spirit, the essence and substance of life; would He offend and make angry with Himself for all eternity that beloved friend of His, and wounding him in terrible fashion deny the mystery of His mercy and light of His love, and make him deny it? A hundred thousand times, God forbid! The absolute beauty which adorns the universe with its manifestation, the absolute mercy which makes happy all creatures, is most certainly exempt from such infinite ugliness, far elevated above such absolute tyranny, such unkindness.7

The fact that God’s love for His own Beauty, and for His own Beauty to be known, leads to the act of creation and His concomitant love for that creation seems logical, at least with

436

  On Love regard to the frame of reference that Nursi constructs in these passages on Divine love. But what does it actually mean to say that God is love or that God loves? Despite Nursi’s valiant attempts to show that Divine love is in no way comparable with the love that we as humans experience, the fact that it is one of the most prevalent yet definitionally elusive of human emotions makes our effort to understand it in the context of God doubly difficult. Despite numerous verses in the Quran which are unambiguous in their assertion that God loves, and is loved, a considerable number of medieval Muslim theologians, including some notable Ash’arite thinkers, rejected the notion that one can talk about God’s love. In the opinion of Juwaynī, for example, to say that God loves someone does not mean that He feels an inclination towards him in the way that human lovers feel an inclination towards each other.8 To say that God loves someone means that He bestows favours on him and acts towards him in a beneficent manner; God’s love, then, means His benevolence or munificence. As for man’s love for God, that is expressed through his submission to the Divine ordinances. Where God is concerned, one cannot talk of love in the traditional sense of the word because God is above being inclined to man, or indeed to being the object of human inclination.9 Juwayni offers an alternative explanation, namely that God’s love is equal to his will; when that will involves the bestowal of favours, it is called love, but when it involves the meting out of punishment, it is called anger or wrath.10 What Juwayni and other Ash’arite scholars appear to be saying is that to attribute inclination to God is to impute to Him a lack, which is inconceivable with regard to an absolute and perfect Creator. Similarly, to attribute love of God to man would be a violation of God’s utter transcendence, for how is it possible that God, Who is above all other things and like no other thing at all, could be the object of human love? It is clear from Nursi’s exposition of God’s love – both His self-love and His love for creation – that his view is completely at odds with that of Juwaynī and many other Ash’arite scholars. For them, God neither loves nor experiences ‘pleasure’, be it with regard to Himself or other creatures: to say that God loves is to attribute to him a human attribute, and this is in contravention of His absolute otherness. Thus the Quranic references to God’s love for mankind must be understood as referring to His bestowal of bounties on them, or His willing of that which is good, such as rewards for those who have been obedient to Him. For Nursi, however, it is clear that love is a very real attribute of God, Who truly loves His creation as He loves Himself. It is also clear that man can truly love God; indeed, as we shall see shortly, Nursi claims that God is in reality the only thing that man can love. It would appear that the problem with the Ash’arite view as expressed above is their over-emphasis on the possible threat to God’s incomparability posed by a notion the nature of which they seem not to have understood. As we have seen in earlier chapters, God’s incomparability (tanzīh) has to be viewed in the context of His similarity (tashbīh). In other words, from the perspective of His similarity, to talk about His loving us, and our loving Him, is perfectly valid: indeed, the only way that we can know He is a loving God is through what Nursi would call the ‘sample’ of love that He puts in us when He creates us. We know all of the Divine names because we are their loci of manifestation, and love is one of those names. However, once we have concluded that just as we love things, then God too must love His creation, the matter has to be seen from the perspective of His incomparability. While it is true that He loves, His absolute otherness – His incomparability – means that

437

The Qur’an Revealed  He does not love in the way that we love. Nursi is always careful to remind the reader that when we are discussing names that are ‘shared’ between God and man, we have to bear in mind that since ‘nothing is like Him’, the mode in which the attribute is found in God is completely different to the mode in which it is expressed in man, although there is just enough similarity between the two to allow us to grasp the concept in the first place. Human love, for example, is preceded by knowledge and perception, which do not apply to God; God does not love things by ‘coming to know’ them, or by perceiving over time that which is lovable in them. Human love is something which develops; God’s love cannot be described in the same way, since He has a permanent attribute of love, which is immutable. Human love stems from need and is twinned with desire and yearning; God’s beauty is absolute and thus actual, not potential. Human love can be a passionate love (‘ishq), with all that entails, whereas that which we understand as passion cannot be predicated of God. God loves Himself for Himself and by Himself: He does not have to get to know Himself, or perceive the benefit in his His love over time, or love Himself for the sake of something else. In God, love, lover and beloved all coalesce as one. The same cannot be said of human beings. Nursi’s emphasis on God’s love for His own beauty brings to mind the Prophetic Tradition, ‘God is beautiful and He loves beauty’. Beauty is thus posited as something which it is impossible not to love, and while God does not love beauty in the way that we love beauty, it is true that He loves it in a way that befits His divinity. Human love for beauty, on the other hand, implies a seeking, an attempt to attain; it implies efforts made to satisfy a need or address a lack. Beauty is something that we love because we do not have it, and even when we attain it, we know that it is not really ours and that it may fade. God’s beauty, however, is something that exists of necessity: He is actually beautiful rather than potentially so. He does not move from not having beauty to having beauty, and therefore loving beauty in the sense of desiring it, as humans do, does not apply to Him. The fact that He is beauty means that He is also One Who loves, because absolute beauty requires absolute love, and He is the One Who possesses both – in a manner, as Nursi says, that is “fitting for the necessary existence and holiness of the Necessarily Existent Essence, in a form suitable to His absolute riches and the self-sufficiency of His essence and in a way appropriate to His absolute perfection and freedom from defect.” 11 That Nursi distinguishes between Divine love and Divine will is clear not only from the passages above but also from his general approach to the Divine names. Indeed, to equate Divine love with Divine will, as the Ash’arite detractors of the notion of Divine love tended to do, is highly problematic. For example, everything to which Divine will and power is connected is originated, emerging into the phenomenal world from a state of apparent non-existence. Given this, the Ash’arite position which says God’s love is nothing more than His will implies a denial that God can love things which already exist. If will is the same as love, and can be directed only to things not yet existent in order to bring them into existence, then it will be impossible for humans to love God – who exists eternally – or for God to love those deeds carried out by man which no longer exist. Therefore there has to be a distinction between the will to do something on the one hand and the love for that thing on the other. The Divine will that brings something into existence obtains at the time of its

438

  On Love creation, just as man’s will obtains only at the time that he chooses to act. Love, however, is something which can be linked to that which is existent and enduring. Indeed, as Nursi points out, it is for the sake of that existent thing, which is the ‘final cause’ or telos, that the will acts. Without this goal in mind, there is no act, no will. If you want to bake a cake, the cake is the object willed as the telos, the ‘final cause’ or aim. Without this aim, you would not will to engage in the mixing of ingredients and baking which are the means to the desired object. The same can, mutatis mutandis, be applied to God’s love for His creation and man’s love for God. Thus Nursi understands love in fully teleological terms, asserting against many of his Ash’arite predecessors that not only can God love and be loved, but that He can also love Himself.

Man’s innate love for God

If God is, as Nursi assures us repeatedly, the possessor of all attributes of perfection, it follows on that whatever He creates will not only reflect those attributes but also, insofar as they are admixtures of existence and apparent non-existence, have an innate desire for them as well. Creation is, after all, a mirror held up to God’s ‘most beautiful names’. Again, having dealt with Nursi’s approach to existence and entities in an earlier chapter, we should stress that the problematic of the ontological status of creation as the ‘mirror’ is not our business here. What concerns us at this juncture is Nursi’s understanding of the relationship between the Beloved, His love and those who love Him. Before establishing the reality of the mutual love between God and man, Nursi points out that the motivating force of Divine love enraptures all entities in the phenomenal world without exception. Just as a great many degrees of loveliness, beauty, grace and perfection are present in all of the Divine Names, so there are a great many degrees of love, pride, glory and grandeur. It is because of this that the elevated and authoritative saints who manifested the Name of Loving One said: “Love is the very leaven of the universe. It is through love that all beings are in motion. It is from love that the laws of attraction, affinity and ecstasy present in all beings spring.” One of them wrote the following: The firmament is intoxicated, the angels and the stars are intoxicated, The heavens are intoxicated, the moon and the earth are intoxicated, The elements are intoxicated, the plants, the trees and mankind are intoxicated, Animate creatures are all intoxicated, All the particles of all beings are altogether intoxicated, and yet more intoxicated. That is to say, everything receives the manifestation of Divine love and is intoxicated in accordance with its disposition. It is well-known that every heart has affection for someone who bestows kindnesses on it, and that it loves true perfection and is enamoured of noble beauty. And the heart loves even more one who bestows kindnesses, not only on itself, but also on those it loves and feels compassion for. And so, as we explained before, may it not be understood from the following just how deserving of love and passion is the All-Beauteous and Glorious One, the All-Perfect Beloved One, and how intoxicated and giddy is the whole universe with love of Him?

439

The Qur’an Revealed  For He is named with a thousand Names each of which is the source of thousands of perfections and the means for thousands of degrees of beauty. And through His bounties, in all the Names are thousands of treasuries containing bounties, and He makes all those beings we love happy.12

If creation is the mirror in which the perfections of the Real are made manifest, albeit as somewhat shadowy reflections of the One reflected, man, as the ‘bearer of the Trust’, is a conscious, full-length looking-glass, capable of manifesting – and reflecting back – all of God’s names. If man is the most comprehensive manifestation of the Divine attributes of perfection, and is able to see in the mirror of his own self all of the gems which make up the ‘Hidden Treasure’ that is God, how is it possible, Nursi asks, for him not to love the Source of his own being, particularly since he is a part – the noblest part – of a cosmos that is ‘intoxicated’ with the Divine? Man was created with an infinite innate love for the universe’s Creator. For included in human nature is love of beauty, worship of perfection, and love of bestowal. His love increases in accordance with the degrees of beauty, perfection and bestowal, reaching the furthest degrees of ecstatic love. Furthermore, contained in tiny man’s tiny heart may be a love as great as the universe. Yes, the fact that writings equivalent to a library of thousands of books may be inscribed in the faculty of memory, which is a coffer of the heart’s the size of a lentil, shows that the human heart may contain the universe and bear love that great. Since human nature has such an infinite capacity to love bestowal, beauty and perfection; and since the universe’s Creator possesses infinite sacred beauty, the certain existence of which is self-evidently established by His works to be seen in the universe; and since He possesses infinite holy perfection, the existence of which is necessarily proved by the embroideries of His art apparent in beings; and since He is the owner of infinite bounties, the existence of which is certainly established by the infinite varieties of His bestowal and bounties to be observed in living creatures; these surely demand infinite love from man, who is the most comprehensive, the most needy, the most thoughtful and the most yearning of conscious beings.13

Nursi says that just as God loves His own beauty, man too is created with an innate love for beauty and perfection, both of which find their apotheosis in the One Who creates them, whether they are aware of Him or not. It may be argued that what Nursi is implying is that the love of the creation for the Creator is a direct corollary of the love of the Creator for the created. Beauty gives rise to love because it is loved for its own sake, which is why, as Nursi has already established, God loves His own Beauty. He has also shown that love is a dynamic force, responsible for all of the activity that we witness in the phenomenal world. Love is dynamic insofar as it compels the one who loves to move, to strive towards the object of desire. And the object of desire, under the effect of the inexorable pull that love exerts, has no option but to be drawn towards the one who desires it. The love of God for man must then be reciprocated by the love of man for God, which is ‘hardwired’ into his creational make-up, whether he recognises it or not. Indeed, all human beings are capable of infinite love for the All-Glorious Creator, and in the face of His beauty, perfection and bestowal, the Creator is more deserving than

440

  On Love anyone to be loved. All the varieties of love and intense attachment a believing human being has for his life, immortality, existence, his world, his self and other beings, are droplets of his capacity to love God. His various intense emotions are transformations of that capacity of his to love, and distillations of it in other forms.14

While all human beings are, as Nursi says, capable of infinite love for God, this is not on account of what they possess but what they lack. This is where, conceptually, God’s love and man’s love part company: God is absolute beauty and loves what He possesses; man lacks absolute beauty and thus loves what he does not have. In his exposition of the nature of the ‘human I’ in Chapter Five, we saw how Nursi described man as possessing ‘samples’ of the Divine names in his being. These ‘samples’ are found in man in his capacity as the ‘mirror’ held up to the Divine attributes. In other words, they are nothing more than reflections and, as such, do not belong to man himself. His being a locus of their manifestation is merely in order to give him an idea of the reality of the Name which he appears to find in himself, in order that he might extrapolate from his apparent ownership of that name to God’s real ownership of it. In reality, man is and has nothing of himself: if he has beauty, it is a reflected beauty; if he has wisdom, it is a reflected wisdom, and so on. Man experiences the perfections as his own, but his possession of them is a necessary illusion designed to facilitate his awareness and realisation of their true Owner, to Whom he is indebted for creating him as a locus of manifestation for the ‘Hidden Treasure’ that is the sum of all Divine names and attributes. Thus it is in fact the innate poverty of things which draws them inexorably to the qualities and attributes of perfection. It is not having that fuels the desire to have. And the more one has – or appears to have -, the more one wants, and the more one wants to have it forever. If man lacks beauty, he is drawn inexorably towards it; if he possesses beauty, he is drawn inexorably towards any means of keeping it, for despite his claims to the contrary, he knows deep down that these beautiful things are not his. He knows that they have been given to him – either by God, by nature or by genetic good-fortune – and just as he knows that they have been given to him, he knows that they can be taken away. Man is thus well aware of his existential poverty, which is why he is searching constantly for ways to remedy it. One way is to admit his poverty and rely on the One Who is above all need; another is to refuse to admit his poverty and rely on an endless number of things, all of which are as existentially poor as man himself. If we consider God and the cosmos as two different realities, the object of human love may be God or something that is ‘other than God’. However, Nursi reminds us constantly that everything in the cosmos is a reflection of God, and therefore it soon becomes clear that even if we think we are loving something ‘other than God’, we are not, for ‘other than God’ actually has nothing in or of itself that is worthy of being loved: it is, after all, only a reflection. And so if we understand that the cosmos is nothing but the manifestation of God’s attributes, we also come to realise that there is nothing that can be loved apart from God. This applies to unbelievers as much as it does to believers. Nothing is actually loved for its own sake except God, for nothing actually points to itself, although naturally it appears to do so when we uproot it from its Divine soil and refuse to acknowledge its connection with the Creator. We may think that it is money or power or fame that we love, but on

441

The Qur’an Revealed  closer inspection it becomes clear that those things are not loved for themselves but for the qualities, attributes and effects that they represent. And those qualities, attributes and effects are all connected to the attributes of perfection which belong to God. Moreover, whether he articulates it as love for God or not, man’s need and capacity for love are endless. Man is such that he cannot love ephemeral things: it is not just beauty that he loves, it is the permanence of beauty; it is not just peace that he craves, it is an enduring, everlasting peace. In short, his love is love of perfection, and perfection belongs to the domain of the everlasting. As Nursi explains, man’s love of the attributes of perfection reflects his love of immortality. Whether he believes in an afterlife or not, man is such that he craves the everlasting. Included in human nature is an intense love. Even, because of the power of imagination, man fancies a sort of immortality in everything he loves. Whenever he thinks of or sees their passing, he cries out from the depths of his being. All the lamentations at separation are interpretations of the weeping resulting from love of immortality. If there was no imagined immortality, there would be no love. It might even be said that a reason for the existence of the eternal realm and everlasting Paradise is the intense desire for immortality arising from that passionate love of immortality, and from the innate and general prayer for immortality. The Enduring One of Glory accepted man’s intense, unshakeable, innate desire and his powerful, effective, general prayer, for He created for transient man an eternal realm. Is it at all possible that the Munificent and Compassionate Creator would accept the insignificant wish of a tiny stomach and its supplication through the tongue of disposition for a temporary immortality through creating innumerable sorts of delicious foods, and not accept the intense desire of all human kind, which arises from an overpowering innate need, and mankind’s universal, constant, rightful, just prayer for immortality, offered through word and state? God forbid, a hundred thousand times! It is not possible that He would not accept it. Not to accept it would be in keeping with neither his wisdom, nor His justice, nor His mercy, nor His power. Since man is most desirous of immortality, all his perfections and pleasures are dependent on immortality. And since immortality is particular to the Enduring One of Glory; and since the Enduring One’s Names are enduring and immortal; and since the Enduring One’s mirrors take on the hue of the Enduring One, and reflect His decree, and manifest a sort of immortality; for sure the matter most important for man, his most pressing duty, is to form a relation with that Enduring One and to adhere to His Names. For everything expended on the way of the Enduring One receives a sort of immortality. Thus, the second The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One! expresses this truth. In addition to healing man’s innumerable spiritual wounds, it satisfies the intense wish for immortality in his nature.15

Man desires immortality because he is created with an innate love of perfection. He is brought into being by the love of a Creator Who is Himself the only entity worthy of love, simply on account of the fact that He is the One in Whom all perfections are to be found. Since man is created with an innate love of perfection, which cannot be had in this fleeting phenomenal world, would it be reasonable, he asks, for the One Who creates that love in man to deny him its fulfilment in a world that is everlasting? Indeed, if God desires to

442

  On Love observe His own Beauty, and creates ‘mirrors’ in which to ‘observe’ Himself, the fact that His Beauty is infinite and everlasting must surely serve as proof of the existence of a realm in which death and decline play no part, and in which the endless capacity that man has for love may be fulfilled. Nursi thus uses man’s infinite capacity for love as an indirect argument for the existence of an everlasting realm which succeeds this ephemeral phenomenal world, and which is referred to as the hereafter. Man’s most urgent task, then, according to Nursi, is to acknowledge the existence of the hereafter and to “form a relation with that Enduring One and to adhere to His Names.” In other words, to ensure his felicity in the everlasting realm, towards which all beings are being moved inexorably, man has to become conscious of the true Source of the names and attributes in the ‘mirror’ of his being and surrender them consciously to their rightful Owner. Nursi’s explanation of how this works – and what happens when it doesn’t – is something we shall now explore.

The pitfalls of love

As Nursi shows us throughout the Risale-i Nur, man is the locus of manifestation (maz.  har) of the Divine names; indeed, he is their most comprehensive ‘mirror’. Being a maz.  har is part of his creational make-up, and it applies to all human beings, whether they are believers in the Source of the names they reflect or not. However, as well as being a maz.  har, he is also a muz.  hir, or a ‘displayer’ of the names. In other words, not only does the mirror of his being ‘receive’ the reflection of the names from the One who reflects them, but it also ‘displays’ those names openly, both to itself and to others. God created man and made him a comprehensive summary of the universe and an index of the book of the world, which comprises numberless worlds, and lodged in his essence a sample from each, in which is manifested one of His names. If man spends all of what is bestowed on him in the way of that for which he was created, for the purpose of offering thanks, a sort of praise, and obeying the precepts of Islam, which removes the rust of nature, each of those samples becomes a map [illuminating] his world, and a mirror reflecting it and the attribute manifested in it and the name it displays. In this way, with both spirit and body, man becomes a summary of the worlds of the visible and the unseen, and manifests what is manifest in them. Through offering praise he becomes both a place of demonstration (maz.  har) and a demonstrator (muz.  hir) of the attributes of perfection. This is implied by what Muh.  yī al-Dīn al-‘Arabī said in an explanation of the Tradition, “I was a hidden treasure, so I created creation that they might know Me.” That is, I created creation to be a mirror in which I might observe my beauty. 16

Man’s duty on earth is thus not just to reflect the names of God, but to demonstrate or display them consciously and in a manner that befits a bondsman of the Almighty, namely through praise, thanks, worship and submission. A saying attributed to Muhammad tells human beings to “Qualify yourselves with the qualities of God”; as Nursi says, man’s most pressing duty is to form a relationship with God and to ‘adhere’ to the Divine names. Man is by virtue of his creation a full-length mirror held up to the Divine names of perfection: to become truly human and worthy of paradise, however, he must display those names

443

The Qur’an Revealed  consciously, and on God’s terms rather than his own. To display them consciously means to acknowledge that they belong not to him but to God, and that they are to be demonstrated in the way that is in keeping with the will of their real Owner rather than the will of the one to whom they have been entrusted temporarily. Man’s primary duty is thus to acknowledge the true Source of the names and reflect them ‘in the name of God’ and for His sake. In short, he must make proper use of those perfections he finds in himself in order to perform his duty, which is to know, love and worship his Creator. The perfections that have been reflected in him are there because of God’s love for His creation, and it is only right, Nursi tells us, that this love be reciprocated. And, indeed, the love is reciprocated, because as we have already seen, man cannot help but love the perfections he finds reflected in himself, and will display them naturally in all forms of self-expression throughout his life. However, the reciprocation that is the prerequisite of felicity is the reciprocation that is directed towards the true Source of the love which has bestowed those perfections on man. That he loves the perfections he has been given is clear, for all perfections are loveable. What makes a true human being in God’s eyes, however, is his love not for the perfections but for the Perfect. For those ‘samples’ which Nursi says have been placed in man are only shadows or simulacra of perfection: they are perfect in a limited sense only, for they are they are juxtaposed with apparent imperfection, which makes them tangible in the first place. That is to say, the Possessor of a beauty, perfection and munificence that are infinitely superior to the beauty, perfection and munificence to be seen in all the creatures of the universe, and that arouse love, and an Eternal Object of Worship, an Everlasting Beloved, one single manifestation of Whose beauty is sufficient to replace all other beloveds, has an enduring life through pre-eternity and post-eternity - a life free from any trace of cessation or ephemerality and exempt from any fault, defect or imperfection.17

Thus when man discerns a perfection within himself, he does not find it in its absolute state: it is always tempered by finitude and prone to decline and disappearance. Those perfections are thus nothing but indications of the absolutely Perfect One, of Whom they are but a reflection. To reciprocate God’s love, therefore, man must see the relative perfections in his being as pointers towards the absolutely Perfect, and it is to Him that his love must be directed. And I understood that while love for the beautiful, inner faces of the world which look to the Hereafter and Divine Names had been given to mankind, since they spent it on its transient, ugly, harmful, heedless face, they manifested the meaning of the Tradition: “Love of this world is the source of all transgression.” 18

There are thus two ways of ‘taking on’ or ‘adhering to’ the attributes of God, which man, as both maz.  har (locus of reflection or manifestation) and muz.  hir (conscious reflector), is responsible for doing. The first is to see them as Nursi asserts they really ought to be seen, namely as being ‘Other-indicative’ (ma‘nā-i h. arf ī).19 From this perspective, man sees the samples of the attributes of perfection in his being as pointing to God, and therefore displays them not as his own possessions but as the possessions of their true owner. He displays them in accordance with the precepts laid down in the Quran and in emulation of

444

  On Love the way of Muhammad, who is deemed to be the most comprehensive human maz.  har and the most perfect conscious muz.  hir. The second way is to see the attributes of perfection as being ‘self-referential’ (ma‘nā-i ismī). From this perspective, man sees the samples of the attributes of perfection in his being as pointing to themselves and belonging to him, and therefore displays them not as qualities ‘on loan’ from God but as his own possessions, to exhibit in any manner he sees fit and to dispose of in any way he wishes. Seen from this perspective, man’s attributes are considered part of who he is, and he believes himself to be autonomous with regard to the manner in which they are expressed. This second way – namely seeing the attributes of perfection as being self-referential and belonging to their locus of manifestation – is akin to a man looking in a mirror and falling in love with the mirror and the image reflected in it; the first way – seeing the attributes as indicating their true Owner – is akin to a man looking in the mirror and realising that the true object of admiration is not the reflection but the One reflected. There are certain foolish people who because they do not recognize the sun, if they see it in a mirror, start to love the mirror. With intense emotion they try to preserve the mirror so that the sun within it will not be lost. Whenever the foolish person realizes that the sun does not die on the mirror’s dying and is not lost on its being broken, he turns all his love to the sun in the sky. He understands then that the sun seen in the mirror is not dependent on the mirror, nor does its continued existence depend on it. It is rather the sun which holds the mirror, supplying its shining light. The sun’s continuance is not dependent on the mirror; rather, the continuance of the mirror’s living brilliance is dependent on the sun’s manifestation. O man! Your heart, identity and nature are a mirror. The intense love of immortality in your nature and heart should be not for the mirror, nor for your heart and nature, but for the manifestation of the Enduring One of Glory, Whose manifestation is reflected in the mirror according to the mirror’s capacity. However, due to stupidity, that love of yours is directed to other places. Since it is thus, say: “O Enduring One! You are the Enduring One!” That is, “Since You exist and You are enduring, whatever transience and non-existence want to do to us, let them do it, it is of no importance!” 20

The ‘foolish people who do not recognise the sun’, as Nursi puts it, are clearly those who do not recognise God. Since they do not recognise God, they do not consider either themselves or other entities as being mirrors, and they do not believe that the perfections they perceive in their own selves and the selves of others are reflections. Consequently, since they believe that entities are the owners and producers of the relative perfections in their possession, they focus their love on those entities. Or, to paraphrase Nursi, they fall in love with the mirror and what they perceive in it. The problem begins when the mirror is smashed to pieces, taking the reflection with it. If he wakes from his stupor, Nursi says, and realises that he has been in love with nothing more than a reflection, then wisdom dictates that he transfer his love from the reflection, which is now gone, to the Owner of the reflection, Whose existence is not dependent on the mirror. But to realise that things are mirrors, and that it is not the reflection but the One reflected that is worthy of love, is not easy. The world of multiplicity is the world not of

445

The Qur’an Revealed  a single mirror but of numberless mirrors, and for the unregenerate soul, the smashing of one mirror, while painful, may not be enough to wake him from that stupor. When one reflection is gone, his attention will turn to another, and when that disappears, his attention will be directed elsewhere. Infinite love directed to finite things can only bring sorrow, and with the passing of each mirror, the pain of separation and the despondency of unfulfillment increase accordingly. Indeed, man loves firstly himself, then his relations, then his nation, then living creatures, then the universe, and the world. He is connected with all these spheres. He may receive pleasure at their pleasure and pain at their pain. However, since nothing is stable in this world of upheavals and revolutions swift as the wind, man’s wretched heart is constantly wounded. The things his hands cling onto tear at them as they depart, even severing them. He remains in perpetual distress, or else plunges into heedless drunkenness. Since it is thus, my soul, if you have sense, gather together all those loves and give them to their true owner; be saved from those calamities. These infinite loves are particular to One possessing infinite perfection and beauty. When you give it to its true owner, you will be able to love everything without distress in His name and as His mirrors. That means this love should not be spent directly on the universe. Otherwise, while being a delicious bounty, it becomes a grievous affliction.21

Nursi then spells out some of the pitfalls of a love that is infinite in capacity but which is focused on the finite, and how the pain of that misdirected love can be remedied. When love is directed towards transitory objects, it either causes its owner perpetual torment and pain, or, since the metaphorical beloved is not worth the price of such fervent love, it causes the lover to search for an eternal beloved. Then metaphorical love is transformed into true love. Thus there are in man thousands of emotions, each of which has two degrees, one metaphorical, the other true. For example, the emotion of anxiety for the future is present in everyone. When a person is intensely anxious for the future, he sees that he possesses nothing to guarantee that he will reach the future he is anxious about. Also, in respect of sustenance, there is an undertaking for it, and the future is brief and not worth such intense worry. So he turns away from the future towards the true future beyond the grave, which is long-lasting, and which for the heedless there is no undertaking. Man also displays intense ambition for possessions and position, then he sees that the transient property which has been put temporarily under his supervision, and calamitous fame and position, which are dangerous and lead to hypocrisy, are not worth such intense ambition. He turns away from them towards spiritual rank and degrees in closeness to God, which constitute true rank, and towards provisions for the hereafter, and good works, which are true property. Metaphorical ambition, which is a bad quality, is transformed into true ambition, an elevated quality. And, for example, with intense obstinacy man expends his emotions on trivial, fleeting, transient things. Then he sees that he pursues for a year something not worth even a minute’s obstinacy. Also, in the name of obstinacy, he persists in something damaging and harmful. Then he sees that this powerful emotion was not given him for such things and that it is contrary to wisdom and truth to expend it on them. So he utilizes his intense obstinacy not on those unnecessary transient matters but on the elevated and

446

  On Love eternal truths of belief and foundations of Islam and service and duties pertaining to the hereafter. Metaphorical obstinacy, a base quality, is transformed into true obstinacy; that is, ardent steadfastness and constancy in what is right, a fine and good quality. Thus as these three examples show, if man uses the faculties given to him on account of the soul and this world, and behaves heedlessly as though he was going to remain in the world for ever, they become the means to base morality, wastefulness and futility. But if he expends the lesser of them on the matters of this world and the more intense of them on spiritual duties and duties pertaining to the hereafter, they become the source of laudable morals and the means to happiness in this world and the next in conformity with wisdom and reality. My guess is that one reason the advice and admonitions given at this time have been ineffective is that those giving them say: “Don’t be ambitious! Don’t display greed! Don’t hate! Don’t be obstinate! Don’t love the world!” That is, they propose something that is apparently impossible for those they address like changing their inborn natures. If only they would say: “Turn these emotions towards beneficial things, change their direction, their channel,” their advice would be both effective and they would be proposing something within the bounds of their wills. 22

Why does man fall in love with the mirror? Nursi appears to hit the nail on the head with his speculation that one of the reasons that advice regarding the misdirection of love has gone unheeded is because to those receiving the advice, it appears completely counterintuitive. How can you tell someone not to be ambitious when the drive to use one’s talents and nurture one’s capabilities is innate? How can you counsel someone not to hate when there are so many things in the world to which we have an inbuilt aversion? And how can you suggest that anyone stop loving the world when the world contains glittering displays of all that is beautiful, lovable and apparently attainable? To say that man falls in love with the mirror is to say, first and foremost, that he falls in love with himself: the love-affair that the unregenerate soul has with itself is second to none in its intensity and durability. And in some respects, as Nursi intimates, it is totally understandable. Man is the most comprehensive mirror of God: he possesses ‘samples’ of all the Divine names. Now if he does not attribute them to God, to whom does he attribute them? The answer is simple: he attributes them to himself and appropriates them as his own. They may be nothing but shadows of the real thing, but even as shadows their potency is undeniable. Man loves the relative perfections he perceives within himself because they are reflections of the names of God, Who is loved for His own sake. But if God is not part of man’s mental equation, man focuses on those perfections – attenuated as they are by the fact that they are only reflections – and clings to them as though they were his by birthright. If man is created ‘in God’s image’, with tiny ‘deposits of reflected Divinity’ placed in his being in order to allow him to recognise the true Source of his perfections, is it surprising that, when he rejects that Source, he should want to appropriate those perfections as his own? To grow and develop the locus of qualities such as power, creativity, wisdom, beauty, love and the like, only to be told that in fact, those attributes belong to Another, seems counter-intuitive to say the least. Unless, of course, one deliberates upon the reality of this apparent possession and realises, thanks to the contingency and finitude of the human situation and the fact that

447

The Qur’an Revealed  these perfections are in fact evanescent, that their true Source lies elsewhere. But even then, to ‘surrender’ the names – to ‘give them back’ metaphorically by using them not as we will but as He wills – is no easy thing. The longer that man claims ownership over himself and the attributes he believes so ardently are his, the more convinced he will make himself that this notion of a Source is not something that he should contemplate. Denial and rebellion exacerbate his situation and eventually man’s sense of ‘I-ness’ or selfhood grows, inflated by the imaginary sovereignty he exercises over himself. Rather than using the ‘samples’ of perfection that he perceives within his being in order to know, love and worship God, he uses them to know, love and worship himself: the human ‘I’, which is a yardstick to indicate God, becomes instead the centre of its own universe. It may even be said that the Tradition “I was a Hidden Treasure and I wanted to be known” becomes applicable to unregenerate man, who, having appropriated the perfections of God as his own, expresses them in a way that is most conducive to the consolidation of his sovereignty and self-aggrandizement: he sees himself as a treasure that is aching to be known, loved and worshipped through the expression of the relative perfections that he has misappropriated. Moreover, in order to justify the ownership he believes he exercises over himself and his attributes, he asserts against all reason the ownership of other things over themselves and begins to ‘distribute’ the absolute sovereignty of the Divine among itself and other beings. The attributes of perfection are thus attributed to entities – to nature, causes and other beings. If man is to claim that he owns himself, he also has to believe that other things do too, as Nursi shows us in his discourse on the human ego in Chapter Five. But his ascription of attributes of perfection to other beings is merely a way of justifying his own apparent selfownership. He has to recognise others in order to be recognised himself. He may even love other entities – human beings in particular – but as Nursi points out, that love will inevitably be of the most utilitarian kind, and thus not really love at all. One who loves himself-if his evil-commanding soul has not been purified - will love no one else. Even if he apparently loves someone, he does not do so sincerely, but only for the pleasure of it and the benefits he receives. He always tries to make himself liked. Also, he does not ascribe faults to himself; he defends and exonerates himself like a lawyer. He praises himself, exaggerating and even lying, showing himself to be free of fault, as though sanctifying himself, and according to his degree receives a slap from the verse Who takes as his god his desires. 23

But however hard man tries to convince himself that he is the centre of his own universe, the owner of his own attributes and the master of his own fate, the brute fact of his own existential poverty will always rear its head to disabuse him of his illusions. Separation, decline, death and annihilation are part and parcel of man’s creational lot, and however hard one tries to obliterate these seemingly harsh realities by immersing oneself in the world and becoming oblivious to the vicissitudes of being a finite entity with infinite desires, the price of usurping the names of God will, according to Nursi, have to be paid at some point. For example, love is man’s sweetest, most pleasurable and most precious emotion: if the mystery of Divine unity assists it, it gives miniscule man the expanse and breadth of the universe, and makes him a petted monarch of the cosmos. Whereas if, God forbid, man

448

  On Love descends to associating partners with God and unbelief, because he will be separated for all eternity from all his innumerable beloveds as they continuously disappear in death, love becomes a terrible calamity constantly lacerating his wretched heart. But vain amusements causing heedlessness temporarily numb his senses, apparently not allowing him to feel it. 24

Man’s existential dilemma is that he is a limited, finite being endowed with an unlimited, infinite capacity to love. His yearning for eternity is innate, yet he knows that one day he will die. If he rejects the notion of a God, and an eternal life in an everlasting realm, then it is only understandable that he will direct his love of God to transient entities and his love of the hereafter at the world itself. Instead of reciprocating God’s love by acting in accordance with Divine precepts and attaining the rank of Divine vicegerent on earth, he uses the names and attributes he believes to be his in any way he wishes in order to garner what little status, security and self-esteem he can in a world where the odds are stacked against him, where every love eventually departs and where every pleasure is followed by the pain of its disappearance. And instead of focusing on the hereafter and behaving in a manner that is conducive to his gaining eternal salvation, he invests all of his intellectual and emotional energy in this transient world, where his attempts to create heaven on earth often end up in creating hell. The only way to solve this dilemma, Nursi argues, is through the realisation that love is licit only when it is directed at the One Who is worthy of it. Indeed, man loves firstly himself, then his relations, then his nation, then living creatures, then the world and the whole cosmos. He is connected with all these spheres. He may receive pleasure at their pleasure and pain at their pain. However, since nothing is stable in this world of upheavals and revolutions swift as the wind, man’s wretched heart is constantly wounded. The things his hands cling onto tear at them as they depart, even severing them. He remains in perpetual distress, or else plunges into heedless drunkenness. Since it is thus, my soul, if you have sense, gather together all those loves and give them to their true owner; be saved from those calamities. These infinite loves are particular to One possessing infinite perfection and beauty. When you give it to its true owner, you will be able to love everything without distress in His name and as His mirrors. That means this love should not be spent directly on the universe. Otherwise, while being a delicious bounty, it becomes a grievous affliction.25

Addressing the self-worshipping soul, Nursi makes one final appeal to reason. Love, he says, is the cause of the existence of the cosmos: it is the light of the universe and the light of life. And since man is the ‘most comprehensive fruit’ of the universe, he contains in his heart a love so vast that it can encompass all realms of existence. But the infinite capacity he has for love cannot, if he is to achieve fulfilment, be directed at the finite: only one possessing infinite perfection can be worthy of a love that is infinite in nature.26 However, love is not the only faculty with which man has been endowed, for he also has the ability to fear: fear, like love, has been given to him in order that he may survive; it has also been given to him in order that he may learn who he is and to Whom he truly belongs. Nursi makes one final appeal to the self-seeking soul by warning it of the problems which arise when these faculties are misused:

449

The Qur’an Revealed  Two faculties, through which one may experience fear and love, have been included in man’s nature. This love and fear are bound to be turned towards either creatures or Creator. However, fear of creatures is a grievous affliction, while love for them is a calamitous tribulation. For you will fear people who will neither pity you nor accept your pleas for mercy. So fear is a grievous calamity. As for love, the one you love will either not recognize you or will depart without bidding you farewell. Like your youth and property. Or else he will despise you because of your love. Have you not noticed that in ninetynine out of a hundred cases of metaphorical love, the lover complains about the beloved. For to love and idolize worldly beloveds with the inner heart, which is the mirror of the Eternally Besought One, oppresses the beloved, and he finds it disagreeable and rejects it. Because man’s nature rejects and casts away things that are contrary to it and unworthy of it. That is to say, the things you love either will not recognize you, or they will scorn you, or they will not accompany you. They will part from you in spite of you. Since this is so, direct your fear and love to the One by Whom your fear will become pleasurable abasement, and your love will become unalloyed happiness. Yes, to fear the Glorious Creator means finding a way to His compassionate mercy, and taking refuge in it. Fear is a whip; it drives you into the embrace of His mercy. It is well-known that a mother gently scares her infant, for example, and draws it to her breast. The fear is most pleasurable for the child, because it drives him to her tender embrace. Whereas the tenderness of all mothers is but a flash of Divine mercy. That means there is a supreme pleasure in fear of God. If there is such pleasure in fear of God, it is clear what infinite pleasure there is to be found in love of God. Moreover, one who fears God is saved from the calamitous and distressing fear of others. Also, because it is for God’s sake, the love he has for creatures is not tinged with sorrow and separation. There is another aspect besides, O soul! and it is the most important. You spend all your love on yourself. You make your own soul your object of worship and beloved. You sacrifice everything for your soul. Simply, you ascribe to it a sort of dominicality. Whereas the cause of love is either perfection, because perfection is loved for itself, or it is benefit, or it is pleasure, or it is goodness or causes like these. Now, O soul! Elsewhere we have proved decisively that your essential nature is kneaded out of fault, deficiency, poverty and impotence, and like the relative degree of darkness and obscurity shows the brightness of light, with regard to opposites, you act as a mirror through them to the perfection, beauty, power and mercy of the Beauteous Creator. That means O soul, that it is not love you should have for your soul, but enmity, or you should pity it, or after it is at peace, have compassion on it. If you love your soul because it is the source of pleasure and benefit and you are captivated by their delights, do not prefer the pleasure and benefit of the soul, which is a mere jot, to infinite pleasure and benefits. Do not resemble a fire-fly. For it drowns all your friends and the things you love in the darkness of desolation and suffices with a tiny glimmer in itself. You should love a Pre-Eternal Beloved on Whose gracious favours are dependent all the pleasures and benefits of your soul together with all the benefits and bounties and creatures of the universe with which you are connected and from which you profit and through whose happiness you are happy, so then you may take pleasure at both your own and their happiness, and receive an infinite pleasure from the love of the Absolutely Perfect One.27

450

  On Love The intense love that man has for himself and his soul is, in reality, love for the Divine Essence, which he misuses and spends on his own self. The only way out, Nursi avers, is to realise this and to reorient that love towards the one who truly deserves it. To achieve this, man has to abandon his egoism, discard the illusion of self-sufficiency and face his existential poverty head on, ‘surrendering’ that which he believes is his to its rightful Owner. All your loves dispersed through the universe are love given to you to spend on His Names and attributes. You have used it wrongly and you are suffering the penalty. For the penalty for an illicit, misspent love is merciless torment. For sure, one particle of the love of a Pre-Eternal Beloved Who, through the Names of Most Merciful and Compassionate, has prepared a dwelling like Paradise for you in which all your bodily desires will be gratified, and through others of His Names has readied for you in that Paradise everlasting favours that will satisfy all the longings of your spirit, heart, mind and other subtle inner faculties, and in all of Whose Names are contained many treasuries of grace and munificence - one particle of His love may take the place of the whole universe. But the universe cannot take the place of even a particular manifestation of His love. In which case, heed this Pre-Eternal Decree which that Pre-Eternal Beloved caused His own Beloved to announce, and follow it: If you love God, follow me, and God will love you.28

The sacralisation of love

Nursi has highlighted some of the dangers which await man if he is refuses to acknowledge the true source of the love he feels and if, in his failure to orient that love towards the One most worthy of receiving it, he directs it instead at his own self and at other creatures. But what of the believer? One may acknowledge the true Source of love yet, on account of the unavoidable feelings of affection, attraction and attachment that he feels towards that which is clearly ‘other than God’, find himself in a dilemma. Love is not something that can be avoided: just as it is the raison d’etre of creation itself, it is woven deep into the tapestry of man’s psycho-spiritual being. Consequently, even though he acknowledges that love belongs only to One, he finds that his love is shared among many. He loves his father, his mother, his wife, his children and his friends. He loves delicious foods, fruits and drinks. He loves his youth, his life, the prophets and the saints. He loves the world and all of the wonderful things he sees in it. His capacity for love is truly endless. How, then, is the believer to reconcile the love that he feels for numerous things ‘other than God’ with the fact that, in reality, his love must be given to only the One? If we are to love the names, attributes and essence of God alone, does this mean we must relinquish the love we feel for everything other than Him? Nursi begins his response to these questions by pointing out that it is not a case of relinquishing love but reorienting it: It is true that love is not voluntary, but through an act of will love’s face may turn from one object of love to another. For example, when a beloved displays some ugliness or shows that he is a veil or mirror to another beloved, who is truly worthy of love, then love’s face may be turned from the metaphorical to the true beloved.29

451

The Qur’an Revealed  However, to reorient one’s love towards God does not mean that one has to stop loving the things to which one is unavoidably attracted, so long, of course, as they are licit. We do not tell you not to love the things you enumerated, but rather to love them for God Almighty’s sake and in the name of His love. For example, to love delicious foods and luscious fruits as being the bounty of God Almighty, the All-Merciful and Compassionate One, is to love His Names of All-Merciful and Bestower of Bounties, and, moreover, takes on the meaning of thanks. This love is to seek gain contentedly within the sphere of the licit, which shows that it is not only for the sake of the instinctual soul but is in the name of the All-Merciful One. It is to eat thoughtfully and with gratitude.30

To love food because it is delicious and to love food because it is a Divine bounty that betokens God’s attributes may not seem at first glance to be mutually exclusive, but for Nursi it would seem that they are. To love food because it is delicious appears unproblematic; delicious food is delicious, and the love of food that we perceive as being delicious is something God-given. Yet to love food on account of its being delicious is something alien to Nursi’s theological sensibility. Firstly, Nursi would say that the food’s deliciousness is down not to the food itself but to the one who created both the food and the sense of taste that appreciates it. Secondly, in keeping with his belief in apparent causes as a ‘veil’ over the creative ‘hand’ of God, Nursi would argue that the food is not the cause of our finding the food delicious but merely an ‘occasion’ for it: in reality, the food and our finding it delicious are two separate yet interconnected effects caused directly by God. It is therefore a travesty of the truth to describe deliciousness and its effects as inhering in the food itself, and thus ‘to love food because it is delicious’ has no real meaning. While it would be tempting to dismiss this as so much theological nit-picking, Nursi’s insistence that distinct lines of demarcation be drawn between causes and their apparent effects lies at the very heart of his theological understanding. This is especially the case when it comes to the issue of love, for man’s very salvation stands or falls on whether he can make the distinction between the true object of love and its reflection. The case of the food and its perceived deliciousness may seem a trivial one, but it is possible to extrapolate from that to include every example of love which, if misdirected, can cause untold misery. Man does not have to stop loving delicious food, Nursi says, although he does have to stop loving food because it is delicious. All he needs to do in order to make his love of delicious food licit is to love it ‘for the sake of God’. In other words, he must try to see it not as ‘selfreferential’ but as ‘Other-indicative’; he must try to see the various names and attributes of God which underpin the existence of the food and the existence of the senses which find that food delicious. His love for the food will then be transformed into love for the Giver of food and the Creator of human taste, and in so doing become sacralised. The same process of reorientation is to be applied to all objects of human love, as Nursi explains: Love and respect for parents, when given for the sake of the wisdom and mercy that compassionately fitted you out and caused them to bring you up with tender care, pertain to God Almighty’s love. The sign that this love, respect and compassion are for God’s sake is that when they are old and are of no more use to you and bring you only trouble and difficulty, you are even more loving, kind and compassionate towards them. The

452

  On Love verse Should one of them, or both, attain to old age in your care, never say to them a word of contempt 31 summons children to respect and be kind to their parents in five degrees, and demonstrates how important are the rights of parents in the eyes of the Quran, and how ugly ingratitude towards them.32

Love for parents, then, is sacred love when it is given in return for the mercy and compassion manifested in them by the All-Merciful and the All-Compassionate. As Nursi points out, when love for one’s parents is sacralised, whatever demands they make of their children in their old age on account of illness and infirmity, they will not be a burden because they are loved for the sake of God and not solely for the sake of their own selves. The same applies to children: And, to love and protect children with perfect compassion and tenderness because they are gifts of the All-Compassionate and Generous One once again pertains to God. The sign indicating that that love is for Almighty God’s sake is patience and thankfulness should they die, rather than crying out indespair. It is to say, “He was a lovable little being created and owned by my Creator, Who entrusted him to my supervision. Now that His wisdom requires it to be thus, He has taken him from me, taken him to a better place. If I had one apparent share in that little creature, a thousand true shares belonged to his Creator.” It is to submit saying, “All authority is with God.” 33

Children are gifts from God that are entrusted to us for indeterminate periods, Nursi says: there is no guarantee that they will be with us forever, and we have no right to expect that they will. If we love our children because they are ours, they become little more than possessions. Granted, they are inestimably precious possessions, but if they are loved for themselves they are precious not because they are inherently lovable but because they are extensions of our own selves. However, if they are loved for the sake of God, the stultifying sense of ownership which causes a bereaved parent to despair will be replaced by resignation and acceptance that what is given may always be taken away, and that was is taken away was never really ours to begin with. Love of friends, too, if not for the sake of God is arguably always for the sake of the self and the emotional benefits it brings. As for friends and acquaintances, if they are friends of God Almighty by reason of their belief and good works, according to the meaning of ‘love for God’s sake,’ that love, too, pertains to God.34

Friendship, then, can have little meaning if the friend in question is not a friend of God. Love of friends who are friends of God, on the other hand, is actually love for the Divine attributes made manifest in them, and thus in reality is directed at their Creator. Furthermore, you should love and cherish your wife as a companionable and gracious gift of divine mercy. But do not fasten your love to her physical beauty, which swiftly fades. Rather, woman’s most attractive and agreeable beauty is the fineness of character that accompanies the delicacy and refinement peculiar to her. As for her most precious and sweet beauty, it is her earnest, sincere, sublime and luminous compassion. This beautiful tenderness and fineness of character continues and increases until the end of her days. Moreover, that weak and delicate creature’s rights of respect will be protected by that love.

453

The Qur’an Revealed  Otherwise, when her superficial beauty fades the poor woman will lose her rights, even when she most needs them.35

It would have been tempting here to translate wife as ‘spouse’, so as to make the passage non-gender specific and thus relevant to both sexes. However, Nursi was aware that he was living in a solidly patriarchal society where women were often seen as possessions rather than equals. One may argue, of course, that things have not changed a great deal in the intervening years, but that is not the point here. That Nursi focuses on male attitudes and behaviours here, while in keeping with the ethical consideration of the Quran, is quite remarkable, given the time at which he was writing and the audience to which his work was directed. The reader will, of course, understand that in principle, whatever applies to men in this particular passage also applies to women. In short, a spouse is to be loved not for physical or material benefit but because of the Divine attributes they reflect. Similarly, to love the prophets and saints as God Almighty’s most esteemed bondsmen is to do so for the sake and in the name of God Almighty, and from that point of view it pertains to Him. And to love and preserve life as most precious wealth and capital that will gain eternal life, and a comprehensive treasury yielding eternal perfections which Almighty God has given to you and to all humanity, and to employ it in His service, is, once again, in one respect, love that pertains to the True Object of Worship. Also, to admire, love and put to proper use the grace and beauty of youth as being a fine, sweet and beautiful bounty of Almighty God is a sort of licit and thankful love. And to love the spring thoughtfully as being the page of the subtlest and most beautiful inscriptions of Almighty God’s luminous Names and the most finely adorned and glittering exhibition of the All-Wise Maker’s antique art is to love His Names. And to love this world as being the tillage for the hereafter, as a mirror of the Divine Names and a missive of God Almighty, and as a temporary guest-house, on condition that the evil-commanding soul does not interfere, is to do so for God Almighty’s sake.36

In short, what Nursi is saying is that the world and all that is in it are to be loved not for their own sake but for the sake of the meanings to which they point. A famous Nursian maxim is, “Do not say ‘How beautiful they are!’; rather, say ‘How beautifully they have been created!’ ”, thus shifting the focus from the ‘mirror’ to the One reflected in it. The love of ‘other than God’, he says, must not be allowed to enter man’s ‘inner heart’, for that is the domain of God and is reserved for Him and Him alone.37 If things are loved for the sake of God, that love then becomes ‘pain-free’: if the thing itself should disappear, the meanings it invokes do not; the mirror may smash, but the One who was reflected in it – and Who is reflected in countless other mirrors – remains the same. But if all bounties and fruits are loved for themselves, if they are thoughtlessly delighted in only for the material pleasures that they yield, that love is merely love of self. Also, those pleasures are transient and bring pain. But, if they are loved as favours proceeding from Almighty God’s mercy and as fruits of His munificence, and if pleasure is obtained from them with good appetite by appreciating the degree of kindness in that munificence and favour, then it has both the meaning of gratitude and is a pain-free pleasure.38

454

  On Love Although Nursi suggests that the only pain-free love is one which is oriented away from the ‘mirror’ and towards the One reflected in it, he offers no explanation – in this particular group of passages at least - as to how such a reorientation is to be effected: for insight on his approach to the training or retraining of the soul, one would need to look at his work on worship and spirituality.39 Suffice here to say that what he appears to be advocating is a gradual process whereby the lover trains the soul to see the object of love as something in a sense transparent, or at least as the flimsiest of veils draped over the Divine attributes which render that object lovable. While man is immersed in the visible world, one cannot ignore what is in the mirror. However, since man is also what Nursi describes as a bridge or ‘isthmus’ (barzakh) between the visible world and the world of the unseen, he cannot stop at the reflection either: he has no option, if he wishes to be true to his status as potential vicegerent of God, to see past the reflection and gaze with the mind’s eye on the One reflected. Perhaps what Nursi is suggesting is akin to the Abrahamaic process of sacrifice. Abraham loved his son more than anything in the world; the agony that he must have felt when commanded to slaughter him is unimaginable. Strengthened by faith and submission, however, he showed himself ready to carry out this most literally awful of Divine commands. At the very moment that he was about to slit his son’s throat, however, God told him to put down the knife. One does not have to kill the thing that one loves; one merely has to refrain from seeing it as being worthy of love in and of itself. Once the thing is seen for what it really is, one can love it as a manifestation of God. Once one loves it in this way, it does not have to be sacrificed: it can be kept so long as it is not fetishized or worshipped for its own sake. It can be loved for the sake of God, not for the sake of itself. In advocating the reorientation of love, Nursi appears to be advocating an Abrahamaic self-sacrifice which shifts attention from the reflection of the Beloved to the Beloved Itself. While Nursi may not spell out the steps which man must take to effect this psychospiritual transformation, he does explain why it is necessary: man needs to focus on the Beloved rather than on His reflection because only the Beloved has what man needs. And these needs are nothing but the Divine names and attributes themselves. There are levels in the love man has for God Almighty’s Names. Sometimes the Names are loved with a love for finely made objects. Sometimes they are loved as being titles of the Divine perfections. Sometimes, man is needy and desirous of the Names by reason of the comprehensiveness of his true nature together with his having endless needs. It is through those needs that he loves. For example, if someone were to come forward and do a kindness to all your relations, and the poor, the weak and the needy, for all of whom you feel sympathy although you are powerless to meet their need for help, how that person’s favour-granting title and generous name would please you, how you would love that person through that title. So too, think only of God Almighty’s Names of All-Merciful and Compassionate. They make happy all the believing fathers and forefathers, relations and friends whom you love and feel sympathy for, in this world by means of all kinds of bounties, and in Paradise by means of all kinds of delights. They cause happiness by showing you in eternal bliss to them, and them in eternal bliss to you. So how deserving of being loved is the Name of All-Merciful and the title of All-Compassionate. And you can

455

The Qur’an Revealed  see for yourself just how needy for those two Names is the human spirit. And you can understand just how appropriate is the phrase, ‘Praise be to God for His mercifulness and His compassionateness.’ You are connected to the world and as a result are afflicted by its wretchedness, so if you consider carefully, you may understand just how needy and desirous is your spirit for the Name of All-Wise and for the title of Nurturer. For the Owner of those Names orders, regulates and sustains with perfect wisdom the world, which is like a sort of house for you, and the creatures within it, which are its familiar furniture and lovable decorations. And you are altogether connected to other human beings and grieve when they die. So, if you consider carefully, you may understand just how needy is your spirit for the Names of Inheritor and Resurrector, and for the titles Eternal, All-Generous, Giver of Life and Munificent. For the Owner of these Names saves human beings at the time of their death from the darkness of non-existence and establishes them in a far finer place than this world. Thus, since man’s nature is exalted and his disposition comprehensive, he is, by his very nature, needy with thousands of different sorts of needs for the innumerable Divine Names, each of which has many degrees. Intensified need is longing. Intensified longing is love. And intensified love is passion. As the spirit is perfected, the degrees of love unfold according to the degrees of the Names. Furthermore, since the Names are the titles and manifestations of the One of Glory, love of them will be transformed into love of the Divine Essence. 40

That love is an inescapable part of being human is thus clear; whether it leads to salvation or perdition, however, depends on the direction in which it is oriented and the object upon which it is focused. The only real Beloved is God, Nursi tells us, and therefore the love which we feel towards that which is other than God must, if its true Source is acknowledged sincerely, be directed towards Him. The key, as Nursi explains and as we have seen, is reorientation: to learn to love others not for their own sake but for the sake of God. The key is to see others as mirrors reflecting the attributes of the true Beloved and to love them on account of that which is manifest in them. The key, in short, is not to ‘see double’. In loving one’s self or one’s spouse, one’s child or one’s friend, one is loving nothing but the attributes of God which one finds manifest in those entities who are ‘other than God’ in form yet nothing but God in meaning. Thus so long as one sacralises ones love and attaches himself not to the reflection but to the One reflected, to love the many in the name of the One presents no problem. So, we know that we need to love, and that our need is fulfilled, as Nursi explains, by the very existence of One Who is characterised by attributes such as love, mercy and compassion to the absolute degree. Yet for some, Nursi says, a nagging question still remains, and that is the question of utility: what is the point of these various ties of love and affection, and what benefits are to be had from sacralising them? Nursi’s reaction is to say that any response to a question such as “What is the point of love?” would require several volumes, and so for the sake of brevity he confines himself to what he calls two of the ‘results’ of sacralised love: the immediate results that it yields in this world; and the results that will become apparent only in the world to come. He begins by reiterating the fact that in the hands of unregenerate man, love can ultimately bring nothing but pain.

456

  On Love As we have already explained, loves such as those of the people of neglect and those attached to this world, that are for the sake of the evil-commanding soul, bring many tribulations, and much pain and suffering in this world. While the ease, pleasures and enjoyment they bring are little and few. For example, compassion becomes a painful calamity on account of impotence. Love becomes a calamitous misfortune on account of separation. Pleasure becomes a poisoned cup on account of its transience. And in the hereafter, because they were not for God Almighty’s sake, they will either be without benefit or will be torment, especially if they were illicit.41

Nursi then describes how, if certain objects of love are seen for what they are and loved for the sake of God, they will prove to be pain-free bounties that bring pleasure, which is the very essence of gratitude. He begins with the love that man has for his own self. The result of the love you have for your own instinctual soul will be that you pity it, train it and prevent it from harbouring harmful desires. Then the soul will not ride you, it will not make you a prisoner of its desires, rather, you will ride it. You will drive your soul, not to whims and fancies, but to right-guidance.42

The designation ‘instinctual soul’ refers to the soul or self that desires what has been forbidden; it is often called ‘the commanding soul’ (al-nafs al-ammāra) – ‘commanding’ inasmuch as it tends to push its owner towards the gratification of the ‘lower’ desires. It is the self which runs after the sensual and the materialistic, with little or no regard for issues of right or wrong, justice or injustice. True love for one’s instinctual soul, Nursi says, means not to indulge it but, through compassion for one’s own state, to train it and transform it from a soul that commands evil to one which accepts commands to do good. With regard to love of one’s spouse, Nursi says that if it is for the sake of God, love will be its own reward. As for the love you have for your spouses, then since it will be built on their being sources of tenderness, gifts of compassion and on their fineness of character, if you have sincere love and affection for them, they too will have earnest love and respect for you. As the two of you approach old age these sentiments will increase and you will pass your life happily. But if it is otherwise, if it is love of looks and for the sake of the instinctual soul, then that love will be quickly destroyed, as will your good relations.43

The importance given to parenthood by the Quran is evidenced in a number of verses, most notably the one in which the importance of respect for parents is mentioned immediately after the importance of belief in God: Thy Lord hath decreed that ye worship none but Him, and that ye be kind to parents. Whether one or both of them attain old age in thy life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honour.44

Nursi reiterates this, pointing out that if love for parents is for the sake of God, it counts as a form of worship of inestimable spiritual benefit. With regard to your parents, if your love for them is for God Almighty’s sake, it will be a form of worship, and the older they grow, the more your love and respect for them

457

The Qur’an Revealed  will increase. If you earnestly desire and pray, with the noblest of sentiments and zeal, that they will live far into old age, and even kiss their hands with sincere respect and say, “Let me gain even more reward on their account”, it will obtain for you a most elevated pleasure of the spirit. But if your love is otherwise, and for the sake of the soul and this world, when they grow old and approach the time of becoming a burden for you, if you show them, with the most base and despicable sentiment, that they are a nuisance and then wish for the deaths of those respected people, who were the cause of your life, it will be a savage and grievous pain for the spirit.45

The same applies to children: to love one’s offspring for the sake of God is tantamount to tasting God’s mercy and compassion directly; to love them for their own sake is, indirectly, love for the self and ultimately dysfunctional to spiritual felicity. As for your children, those lovable, friendly creatures whom God Almighty entrusts to your supervision and upbringing, if your love for them is in God’s name it will be a most happy love, a most happy bounty. Neither shall you suffer too much pain at their misfortunes, nor shall you cry out with despair at their deaths. As was stated above you will say, “Since their Creator is both All-Wise and Compassionate, as far as they are concerned, that death is happiness.” Moreover, concerning yourself, you will think of the mercifulness of the One Who gave them to you and you will be saved from the pain of separation.46

Love for one’s offspring which is ‘Other-directed’ rather than ‘self-referential’ will help one weather the storm of misfortune, separation and death, should they occur. Love for friends and acquaintances, while qualitatively different to the love one has for one’s children, is love nonetheless, and must be expressed ‘in the name of God’ if it is to be, as Nursi puts it, ‘pain-free’. If your love for your friends is for God’s sake, because separation from those friends, and even their deaths, will not be an obstacle to your conversing and your brotherhood, you will benefit from that immaterial love and relation of the spirit. And the pleasure of meeting will be permanent. If it is not for the sake of God, the pleasure of one day’s meeting will result in the pain of a hundred days’ separation.47

Among the friends and acquaintances that man loves are those figures whom he may never have met in person, but whose influence on him, and on his beliefs, has been significant. Love for the prophets, saints and great thinkers of one’s religious tradition can be every bit as all-consuming as the love that one has for one’s spouse, parents and offspring. However, Nursi warns that it too must be expressed ‘in the name of God’ and solely for His sake. Now regarding your love for the prophets and saints, I will say this. Since the intermediate realm, which seems to the people of neglect to be a dark, lonely and desolate place, appears to you as a stopping-place illuminated by the presence of those luminous beings, the fact that you will go there will not induce terror and fright, but, on the contrary, an inclination towards it and a feeling of longing; it will not drive away the pleasure of worldly life. But if it is otherwise, if love for the prophets and saints is of the same sort as the love of the subscribers to modern culture for their idols and heroes, on thinking of the death and

458

  On Love disappearance of those perfect human beings and of their rotting in that mighty grave known as the past, it will add one more sorrow to lives that are already painful. That is to say, each will say to himself, “I too will end up in the grave, which rots even such perfect men.” Whereas, when they are seen from the first point of view, they are thought of with complete ease of mind, for they have discarded the clothes of their bodies in the past and now their dwelling-place is the intermediate realm, which is the waiting-room for the future. And the graveyard will be seen as having a familiarity and friendliness.48

Here, Nursi posits the true love that one has for one’s spiritual forebears as a source of solace at those times when one deliberates on death. Buoyed by the realisation that the ‘intermediate realm’ (barzakh) between death and resurrection is one that is inhabited by the spirits of the prophets and saints, a believer will no longer fear death and wish for its postponement. However, love for great individuals that is not expressed ‘in the name of God’ is nothing more than empty hero worship, good neither for this world nor the next. Nursi then turns to man’s love of beautiful things in general: As for beautiful things, if your love for them is for the sake of the One Who fashioned them, it will be in the manner of, “How beautifully they have been made.” This love is pleasurable thought and it causes the gaze of beauty-worshipping delight to see the more elevated and holy and thousand times more beautiful treasures of the degrees of God’s beauty. This love opens up a way to these treasures because it transfers the eye from those beautiful works to the beauty of the Divine actions. And it opens up a way from them to the beauty of the Names, and from them to the beauty of the attributes, and from them to the One of Glory’s peerless beauty; it opens a way to the heart. Thus, if this love is in this form, it is both pleasurable, and it is worship, and it is thought.49

Again, the emphasis here is on love that is ‘Other-indicative’. To love a beautiful thing on account of the fact that it has been created beautifully is, in one sense, to commune directly with the Divine names upon which the creation of that thing is founded. To love ‘in His Name’ is precisely what it says: it is to direct the gaze not at the thing itself, which will one day perish, but at its Creator, Whose ‘face’ will endure after all things have perished: And call not, besides Allah, on another god. There is no god but He. Everything (that exists) will perish except His own Face.50

Nursi then emphasises the importance of transferring love from the ephemeral to the everlasting by singling out man’s love for springtime – a symbol of newness, lovability and evanescence that Nursi uses on numerous occasions. Regarding your love for things of passing beauty such as the spring, since it is in the form of contemplating Divine artistry, when the spring ends the pleasure of the spectacle does not fade. For the meanings that the spring delivers, like a gilded missive, may be contemplated all the time. Both your imagination and time are like films in the cinema, they both cause the pleasure of that contemplation to continue for you, and they renew the spring’s meanings and beauties. Your love, therefore, cannot be temporary and full of regret and pain. Rather, it will be full of pleasure and enjoyment.51

459

The Qur’an Revealed  If spring is loved for the sake of God, Nursi says, its passing will not cause man to grieve. Similarly, if the whole world – which is every bit as evanescent in its own way as a single spring – is loved ‘in God’s name’, man’s awareness of its transience will not perturb him. As for your love for the world, since it will be in the name of God Almighty, the formidable creatures of this world will be like familiar friends for you. Since you love it as the tillage for the hereafter, you will be able to find in everything capital or a fruit that will produce benefits in the hereafter. Neither will its disasters frighten you, nor will its transience and ephemerality trouble you. You will pass your sojourn in this guest-house with the greatest of ease. But should you love it as the people of neglect do, then as we have told you a hundred times, you will drown and perish in a fruitless love, condemned to a depressing, crushing and suffocating transience.52

Nursi then looks at the sacralised ties of love and affection that man enjoys in this world and considers them with regard to the benefits they will yield in his eternal life in the hereafter. He begins again with man’s love of ‘delicious food’, which, if licit and sacralised, will produced metaphorical food for the senses in the world to come. According to the Quran, the result in the hereafter of licit and thankful love for delicious foods and fruits is again delicious food and fruit, but in a form appropriate for Paradise. This licit love desires those foods and fruits of the hereafter. So much so that when you utter the phrase ‘Praise be to God’ over the fruit you eat in this world, it will be embodied as a fruit of Paradise and presented to you there. Here you eat fruit, while there you will eat ‘Praise be to God’. If you see Divine munificence and the All-Merciful One’s favours in bounty and food in this world, your gratitude will be returned to you in paradise in the form of food that truly is delicious.53

Licit love for one’s instinctual soul (nafs) means training that soul rather than giving it free rein; it means treating it with compassion in order to perfect it and guide it towards that which is good. If one sacralises one’s love for the instinctual soul in this world, objects of love befitting its state in paradise will be given to it. As is explicitly stated and proved by a great number of verses in the Quran, when the soul utilises its desires and wishes correctly and employs its faculties and senses in the best way in this world, that is, in the way of God Almighty, as a result of this licit and worshipful love the Absolutely Generous One will bestow on it intimate companions in Paradise, the everlasting realm. He will clothe them in seventy varieties of the finery of Paradise. He will adorn their beings with seventy kinds of beauty that will caress and gratify all the senses of the soul. Each of these companions will be like a miniature animated Paradise.54

If love for one’s spouse in this world has been love for the attributes of perfection they display consciously as believers in God and not solely for any material or physical gain, then one’s partnership will take on an eternal form. Licit love for your spouse in this world is sincere love in consequence of his fine virtues and good character, together with your protecting each other from disobeying God

460

  On Love obstinately and sinning. The Absolutely Merciful One has promised that as a result of this licit love your spouse shall be given to you as an eternal partner in the hereafter, the realm of bliss. You will relate to one another in delight your former adventures in the world, bringing to mind old memories. Your spouse will be an intimate, gracious and eternal friend, who loves and is beloved. And, most certainly, that which He promises shall definitely be given.55

Similarly, the reward for love of parents and offspring that is given in the name of God will be reunion and everlasting togetherness in the realm of the hereafter. The result of licit love for parents and children is this. According to the Quran, the Most Merciful of the Merciful will bestow on that happy family, even though their stations may be quite different, the pure pleasure of each other’s company in the everlasting realm. He will return children who die before reaching puberty once more to the embrace of their fathers and mothers, in a manner appropriate to Paradise. They will be most beautifully adorned and lovable, in the form of the children of Paradise, who are known as immortal youths.56 He will gratify their child-cherishing sentiments and will give them that pleasure and delight eternally. Since those children had not reached the age of responsibility, they will remain eternally as lovable and sweet children. Every pleasurable thing in this world will be found in its highest form in Paradise. Some people surmise that since Paradise is not appropriate for reproduction, there will be none of this cherishing of children, which is so sweet, that is, the pleasure of loving and caressing them. But it will be there too and in the most delightful and sweet form. This then is good news for those whose children die before puberty.57

Friends who have loved each other for the sake of God in this world will also be reunited in the next, says Nursi, where they will enjoy a friendship that will not be ruptured by death and separation. The result of love for righteous friends in this world, according to the decree of, ‘Love for God’s sake’ is, as the Quran states, Facing one another on thrones of happiness. 58 God Almighty will seat them on the chairs of Heaven facing one another. He will cause them to meet with their friends, pleasantly, agreeably and sweetly. They will enjoy themselves recounting their old memories and adventures in this world, with a pure love and companionship that will not be subject to separation.59

For Nursi, to sacralise one’s love for the world and the beautiful things in it means to see them not as beautiful in themselves but as ‘beautifully created’. In other words, it is to see and appreciate them as ‘Other-indicative’ and to apprehend the beauty of the one who bestows existence on them in such pleasing forms. If things are loved in this way, the eternal reward will be the manifestation of those names in a paradisiacal form that is both enduring and infinitely more gratifying than their manifestations on earth. Licit love for beautiful things means to see them with the eye of, ‘How beautifully they have been made,’ and to love the beauty and order of the acts which lie behind those works of art. It means to love the manifestations of the Beautiful Names, which lie behind the order and harmony of the actions, and to love the manifestations of the attributes behind those Beautiful Names. And so on.

461

The Qur’an Revealed  The result will be to see in Paradise, the everlasting realm, the manifestation of the Names, and the beauty and attributes within the Names, in a form a thousand times more beautiful than the beautiful creatures to be seen here. Furthermore, Imam-i Rabbani said, “The subtle exquisiteness of Paradise will be the similitude of the manifestation of God’s Names.” Indeed, an everlasting Paradise will be given that is as large as the world but not ephemeral and transient like this world. And the Names, only pale shadows of which are shown in this world, will be displayed in the mirror of Paradise in a most brilliant form.60

Paradise, then, is nothing more than the manifestation in an infinitely more elevated and transparent form of those Divine names whose shadows and reflections make up the transient, phenomenal world. Nursi reiterates the belief that this world is like a field in which seeds are planted that will blossom only in the hereafter: not only will good deeds performed here give unimaginable fruits there, but human senses, which have an endless capacity to understand the Divine names, will find the kind of gratification in that everlasting realm which they are unable to find in this limited, finite world. Moreover, the result of loving the world as being the tillage of the hereafter is as follows. When the world is seen thus, that is, as a seed-bed or small place of cultivation that produces only shoots, it results in a Paradise where those shoots burgeon and blossom. For in this world man’s senses and faculties are tiny shoots and in Paradise they will unfold in the most perfect form. And his abilities, which are here like tiny seeds, will be given to him there in a form that will blossom with all sorts of delights and perfections. This is proved by the indications of the Quran and by Hadith, and is necessitated by mercy and wisdom. For it is not blameworthy love of the world, which is the source of every fault, but love of its two faces that look to God’s Names and to the hereafter, and is for the sake of the Names and the hereafter. It is to cultivate those faces with thoughtful worship, as if taking the whole world as the means for worship. It is, therefore, most definitely necessitated by mercy and wisdom that a reward should be given that is as large as the world. And one who, through love of the hereafter, has loved its seed-bed, and through love of Almighty God has loved the mirror of His Names, will most certainly desire a beloved like the world, and that too will be a paradise as vast as the world.61

As for the result of faith in, and love of God, the reward itself is nothing less than the contemplation of the Beloved Himself. And so to the result of faith and love of God. It is proved by the consensus of the people of unveiling and verification, by certain Hadith, and by the Quran that a thousand years of happy life in this world is not worth one hour of life in Paradise, and that a thousand years of heavenly life is not worth one hour’s vision and contemplation of the All-Glorious One, Who possesses incomparable beauty and perfection. Everyone may perceive in his conscience a great longing for the vision of a personage famous for his magnificence and perfection, like the Prophet Solomon, and a great yearning to behold a personage distinguished by his beauty, like the Prophet Joseph. And so, if you can, compare how longed-for, sought after and desire-arousing is the

462

  On Love vision of One, one manifestation of Whose beauty and perfection are all the virtues and perfections of Paradise, which are thousands of times more elevated than all the virtues and perfections of this world. 62

With the vision of God in the hereafter, Nursi’s doctrine of love comes full circle. God’s love for His own beauty, he asserts, is the motivating force behind all activity in the cosmos, the crowning glory of which is man himself, the most comprehensive mirror held up to the names of God and the recipient par excellence of the reflection of Divine love. Fuelled by that love, man acts in the cosmos to maximise his own being by reflecting the names of His Beloved, towards Whom he is ‘pulled’ inexorably, whether he realises it or not. With his infinite capacity to give love and receive it, man devotes himself either to the reflection in the mirrors that make up the phenomenal world or the One who is reflected in them. Those who invest their endless emotional capital in the mirrors themselves will find that their love is ultimately unrequited; they can attain salvation only if they turn their face from the mirrors to the One reflected in them. As for those who acknowledge the Beloved yet cannot help but love His reflection, they must reorient their love if they are to benefit truly from His. To reorient their love means to love the reflection in the mirrors not for its own sake but for the sake of the One reflected; it means to love the creation not because it is loveable but because it makes manifest the Beloved. Only through reorientation of his love can man have any hope of felicity in this world or attain what is the telos of his whole creation – the everlasting love of God in the world to come.

463

Chapter Fifteen Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology

When Greek philosophical texts were rendered into Arabic as part of the famed ‘translation movement’ during the Abbasid era, sophia (‘metaphysical truth’ or ‘wisdom’) and phronesis (‘prudence’) were both translated using the same term, h. ikma (‘wisdom’), for what are basically two distinct Aristotelian concepts. For Aristotle, sophia is related to deliberating upon the world and trying to understand why it is the way it is. Sophia is about universal truths and eternal principles, whereas phronesis is personal and experiential: it is about thinking how and why one should act to change things – our own lives, especially – for the better. That the two terms should have been conflated in the course of their translation into the Arabic term h. ikma (‘wisdom’) is not altogether unsurprising, for h. ikma covers both the theoretical wisdom represented by sophia and the practical wisdom involved in phronesis. To enhance definitional precision, however, we will use the term phronesis to describe the kind of practical wisdom employed by Said Nursi in a number of treatises written as guides on how to meet the difficult, everyday challenges of life – imprisonment, for example, or the death of a child – within an overall framework of belief and submission constructed by orthodox Muslim theology, albeit as seen through Nursian eyes. In On Virtues and Vices, attributed to Aristotle, phronesis is defined as the “wisdom to take counsel, to judge the goods and evils and all the things in life that are desirable and to be avoided, to use all the available goods finely, to behave rightly in society, to observe due occasions, to employ both speech and action with sagacity, to have expert knowledge of all things that are useful”.1 In short, phronesis as outlined by Aristotle denotes the art of what in Nursian terms could arguably be described as a kind of theological counselling which appeals to the instinctual soul in order to save it from its own defects, particularly when the soul is subject to the various pressures that arise as a result of the tribulations that go with being human. It is because the soul is the addressee that we have used the term ‘pastoral theology’ in the title of the present chapter. While pastoral or practical theology is a recognised theological form or discipline within the Christian tradition, in Muslim theology it does

465

The Qur’an Revealed  not exist as a recognised field in its own right. That is not to say, however, that pastoral theology as is understood today in Christian circles does not have a long and illustrious history among Muslim thinkers and writers; it is simply that it went, as mentioned earlier, by another name - h. ikma – and was hardly ever the domain of the theologians per se. The pursuit and teaching of h. ikma – and by h. ikma here we mean wisdom as phronesis rather than sophia – was for the most part carried out by the Sufis and the mystics, many of whom wrote extensively on the soul, the dangers which beset it, and the remedies which may be had to alleviate its diseases. The German word for ‘pastor’ is Seelsorger, or ‘one who takes care of the soul’, and from the Quranic perspective, this ‘taking care of the soul’ is the duty par excellence of those who know God. Quranically, the true ‘pastors’ are the fuqahā – although it should be pointed out immediately that by fuqahā we are not referring to ‘experts in Muslim legal theory’, which is how the term has come to be mistranslated. Quranically, a faqīh is ‘one who understands’, and if we take as a point of reference the Quranic verse 9:122, it becomes clear that the ‘understanding’ involved is not of religious rite and ritual – although this is not excluded – but of religion, al-dīn, in general: Nor should the Believers all go forth together: if a contingent from every expedition remained behind, they could devote themselves to studies (liyatafaqqahu) in religion, and admonish the people when they return to them,- that thus they (may learn) to guard themselves (against evil).

The word ulamā, which in modern times is often conflated conceptually with fuqahā and mistranslated as ‘clerics’ or ‘jurists’, also means ‘those who know’ or ‘those who understand’, and is used in the Quran particularly to signify those who have ‘God-knowledge’ and who are thus ‘God-aware’. The original ulamā of whom the Quran speaks in verses such as Those truly fear Allah, among His Servants, who have knowledge: for Allah is Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving2 are those who ‘know God’: theology is a discourse on God, and the subject of pastoral theology is also God. For Nursi, it is an attempt to see God through any problem that one encounters, to realise that wherever one looks, there is the face of God. Pastoral theology in the Nursian sense is the means whereby the afflicted are encouraged to see problems, trials and tribulations as coming from the Divine will, and also the means whereby they are given the conceptual and emotional tools needed in order to face those trials. As mentioned earlier, while there is no recognised discipline in the world of formal Muslim learning known as ‘pastoral theology’, that is not to say that it does not exist. Ghazālī’s Ih. yā ‘ulūm al-dīn, for example, contains much – particularly in its third ‘quarter’ – that could be described as practical wisdom and pastoral theology.3 Nursi, in so many ways a legatee of Ghazālī, has an approach that is not dissimilar to that of his spiritual forebear. In the same way that one can see in Ghazālī’s practical wisdom the imprint of his own existential crisis, in Nursi’s pastoral theology one is able to discern an understanding and sense of empathy that is born largely out of personal experience – and often very bitter experience at that. Moreover, like Ghazālī, Nursi presents his discourse more or less within the framework of what the modern theorist Richard Osmer describes as the four key questions and tasks of the pastoral theologian, namely:

466

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology •

What is happening? (the descriptive-empirical task)

•

What ought to be happening? (the normative task)

• •

Why is this happening? (the interpretative task)

How might we act to facilitate this? (the pragmatic task).4

Yet while Nursi’s ministrations are founded on an acute awareness of what worshipfulness requires, even in the most testing of circumstances, they are tempered by feelings of compassion for the recipients of his advice which stem from his appreciation of mankind’s shared existential poverty before God. Nursi once wrote: It has now become absolutely clear in my view that most of my life has been directed in such a way, outside my own will, ability, comprehension and foresight, that it might produce these treatises to serve the All-Wise Quran.5

In those parts of the Risale which are more overtly homiletic in tenor than others, such as the treatises written in order to advise the elderly and the imprisoned, it is clear that Nursi is writing from years of hard personal experience. He is not a counsellor writing at an emotional distance from the trials and tribulations of his readers: it is evident that not only has he been subjected to the plight of those to whom he gives comfort, but also that he continues to feel exactly the same things that they feel, and experience the same things that they experience. It is clear too that when Nursi describes his own ‘wretchedness’ or excoriates his own soul for some wrongdoing, he is neither affecting excessive humility nor exaggerating his position in order to create a stronger rapport with his audience. Just as the Risale was, he claimed, written as much for his own edification as for anyone else’s, he also made it abundantly clear that the advice he gave to others was directed first and foremost at his own soul. There is much in the Risale which can be classed as pastoral theology - far too much, in fact, to unpack and discuss in a single chapter. To give the reader a taste of Nursi’s practical wisdom, we have chosen six works which are, broadly speaking, representative of the tone and feeling of this particular side of his teaching. These works are A Guide for Youth; Advice to the Elderly; On Patience in Adversity ; Advice to Those in Prison; On the Death of a Child and On Frugality.

A Guide for Youth

Nursi’s Guide for Youth was written in response to the request of a number of “bright youths” who had approached him in the search for an effective deterrent with which to safeguard themselves “against the dangers arising from life, youth and the lusts of the soul.” For Nursi, as one might expect, that deterrent is nothing but belief in God and submission to His creative and legislative will. For your youth will definitely leave you, and if you do not remain within the bounds of the licit, it will be lost, and rather than its pleasures, it will bring you calamities and suffering in this world, in the grave and in the hereafter. But if, through Islamic training, you spend

467

The Qur’an Revealed  the bounty of your youth as thanks, honourably, in uprightness and obedience, it will in effect remain perpetually and will be the cause of gaining eternal youth.6

The fleeting nature of youth is something which is frequently lost on the young, often becoming apparent only when it has fled. To use the manifold energies of youth on attaining one’s spiritual salvation, Nursi argues, rather than on trying to taste as many worldly delights or secure for oneself as much material benefit as possible, will make that ephemeral youth into an everlasting one. As for life, if it is without belief, or because of rebelliousness belief is ineffective, it will produce pains, sorrows and grief far exceeding the superficial, fleeting enjoyment it brings. For contrary to the animals, man possesses a mind and he thinks; because of this, he is connected to both the present time, and to the past and the future. He can obtain both pain and pleasure from them. Whereas, since the animals do not think, the sorrows arising from the past and the fears and anxieties arising from the future do not spoil their pleasure of the present. Especially if the pleasure is illicit; then it is like an altogether poisonous honey. That is to say, from the point of view of the pleasure of life, man falls to a level a hundred times lower than the animals. In fact, life for the people of misguidance and heedlessness, and indeed their existence, rather their world, is the day in which they find themselves. From the point of view of their misguidance, all the time and universes of the past are non-existent, are dead. So their intellects, which connect them to the past and the future, produce darkness, blackness for them. Due to their lack of belief, the future is also non-existent. Furthermore, because they think, the eternal separations resulting from this non-existence continuously produce darkness for their lives. Whereas, if belief gives life to life, then through the light of belief, both the past and the future are illuminated and find existence. Like present time, it produces elevated, spiritual pleasures and lights of existence for the spirit and heart-in respect of belief. Life is thus. If you want the pleasure and enjoyment of life, give life to your life through belief, adorn it with religious duties and preserve it by abstaining from sins.7

A life lived for its own sake, and not for the sake of God, is a life that is, by default, lived in hiding. In other words, as Nursi points out, if unregenerate man is to gain any shred of pleasure from the ‘life of the world’ (h. ayāt al-dunyā), he has to immerse himself in the present. Yet since he is human, and therefore acutely aware of both past and future, he is unable to do this without deadening his senses to what has gone before and what is yet to befall him. And therefore because there will always be reminders that he is a time-bound creature who is ultimately destined to perish, he has to conceive of increasingly effective ways of blinding, deafening and desensitizing himself to the glaring reality that is human finitude. To think or speak of death, and of what may come afterwards, is arguably the greatest secular taboo, and denial of or escape from death arguably unregenerate man’s most pressing concern. Thus for the unbeliever, the reality of man’s ultimate fate must be swept under the carpet continuously, and trodden down whenever the bulge in the carpet becomes unsightly. For Nursi, however, constant remembrance of death is a co-requisite of belief, and particularly laudable when practised by those whose youth has not yet slipped them by.

468

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology Concerning the fearsome reality of death, which is demonstrated by deaths every day, everywhere, at all times, I shall explain it to you with a comparison, in the same way that I told the other youths. For example, a gallows has been erected here in front of your eyes. Beside it is a lottery office, but one which gives tickets for truly huge prizes. Imagine that there are ten of us here and that, whether we like it or not, we shall be summoned there; there is no other alternative. They will call us, and since the time is secret, any minute they may say either: “Come and collect the ticket for your execution! Mount the gallows!” Or: “A ticket to win a prize of millions of dollars’ worth of gold has come up for you. Come and collect it!” As we wait for them to say this, two people suddenly appear at the door. One of them is a scantily dressed woman, beautiful and deceiving. In her hand is some apparently extremely delicious, but in fact poisonous, candy, which she has brought wanting us to eat it. The other is an undeceiving and undeceivable serious person. He enters behind the woman and says: “I have brought you a talisman, a lesson. If you study it, and if you do not eat that candy, you will be saved from the gallows. With this talisman, you will receive your ticket for the matchless prize. Look, you see with your own eyes that those who eat the honey mount those gallows, and until that time they suffer dreadful stomach pains from the poison of the candy. And who it is that will receive the ticket for the large prize is not apparent; it seems that they too mount the gallows. But there are millions of witnesses who testify that they can enter the prize arena easily. So, look from the windows! The highest officials and the high-ranking persons concerned with this business proclaim with loud voices: ‘Just as you see with the clear certainty of your own eyes those mounting the gallows, so be certain as daylight, with no doubt or misgiving, that those with the talisman receive the ticket for the prize.’” Thus, like the comparison, since the dissolute pleasures of youth in the sphere of the illicit, which are like poisonous honey, lose belief, which is the ticket for an eternal treasury and the passport for everlasting happiness, a person who indulges in them descends to death, which is like the gallows, and to the tribulations of the grave, which is like the door to eternal darkness. And since the appointed hour is unknown, its executioner, not differentiating between young and old, may come at any time to cut off your head. If you give up illicit desires, which are like the poisonous honey, and acquire belief and perform the religious duties, which are the Quranic talisman, one hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets (peace be with them) together with innumerable saints and people of truth have unanimously announced that you shall receive the ticket for the treasure of eternal happiness which comes up from the extraordinary lottery of human destiny. And they have pointed to traces of it.8

Nursi’s point here is not that belief will save people from death, but, rather, that it will save them from eternal perdition, as symbolised by the gallows. Everyone will die, but those who die having consumed a surfeit of poisoned candy will have suffered in this world and may continue to suffer indefinitely in the next. While no individual’s fate can be gleaned from the circumstances which attend their life in this world, or indeed from their behaviours, it is clear for Nursi that where there is unbelief, there is the danger of a fate which is ultimately much worse than death. Youth, which is a period of life lived out in what Nursi would

469

The Qur’an Revealed  no doubt have agreed appears at times to be a vast, poisoned candy factory, makes one particularly susceptible to temptation. Nursi is clear that if salvation is to be attained, such temptation must be resisted. For youth will go. And if it goes having been squandered, it results in thousands of calamities and pains both in this world and in the next. If you want to understand how the majority of such youths end up in hospitals with imagined diseases arising from misspent youth and prodigality, and in prisons or hostels for the destitute through their excesses, and in bars due to the distress arising from their pain and suffering, then go and ask at the hospitals, prisons and graveyards. For sure, just as you will hear from most of the hospitals the moans and groans of those ill from dissipation and debauchery resulting from the drives of youth, so will you hear from the prisons the regretful sighs of unhappy youths who are being punished for illicit deeds mostly resulting from the excesses of youth. And you will understand that most of the torments of the grave - that intermediate realm, the doors of which continuously open and shut for those who enter it - are the result of misspent youth, as is testified to by those who have divined the life of the grave, and is affirmed by the people of reality. Also, ask the elderly and the sick, who form the majority of mankind. Certainly, the great majority of them will say with sorrow and regret: “Alas! We wasted our youth on passion and fancy; indeed, harmfully. Be careful, do not do as we did!” Because, as a consequence of the illicit pleasures of five to ten years’ youth, a person suffers years of grief and sorrow in this world, torment and harm in the intermediate realm, and the calamities of Hell in the hereafter. And although such a person is in a most pitiable situation, he in no way deserves pity. For those who freely consent to indulge in harmful actions may not be pitied. They are not worthy of it. May Almighty God save us and you from the alluring temptations of this time, and preserve us from them. Amen.9

Advice to the Elderly

Nursi’s Advice to the Elderly is much more than just a collection of counsels to his ageing peers; it reads as a kind of sustained memento mori, born out of his own experiences and addressed for the most part to himself. That he should dwell on the sorrows and afflictions of his own old age, castigating himself for occasional bouts of despair and rejoicing in the discovery of Quranic ‘cures’ for his spiritual ills, should come as no surprise; after all, Nursi claims to have written the Risale-i Nur primarily in order that he himself should learn from it. Throughout those writings of his which fall into the category of pastoral theology, one feels a sense of self-reflection, of self-questioning and, at times, of self-reproach on Nursi’s part which makes his discourse all the more compelling. This is clearly no run-ofthe-mill pulpiteer, telling others how they should behave or react when they find themselves in straitened and distressing circumstances; this is someone who is able to empathise completely with his audience, and whose solutions are reached only after long and often profound soul-searching. Nursi teaches others by teaching himself, and nowhere is this more evident than in his treatise on old age.

470

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology

Belief in God

Nursi begins his treatise with the Quranic verse O my Sustainer! Infirm indeed are my bones, and the hair of my head glistens with grey; but I am never unblest, O my Sustainer, in my prayer to you (19:1-4) before telling his readers that he wants to talk to them about the various ‘hopes’ that he has discovered in his old age, and which may serve as consolation for the distress and discomfort that growing old can bring. All of these ‘hopes’ are, as one might expect, introduced as products of the wellspring of faith. Respected brothers and sisters who have reached or are approaching old age! Like you, I am elderly. I am going to write about the various ‘hopes’ I have found in my old age and some of the things that have befallen me, out of the desire to share with you the lights of consolation they contain. Of course the lights I have seen and the doors of hope I have encountered have been seen and opened in accordance with my defective and confused abilities. God willing, your pure, sincere dispositions will make those lights shine more brightly and strengthen the hopes I have found. Thus, the spring, source and fount of the following hopes and lights is belief in God.10

Trusting in Divine Mercy

Like many of the ‘hopes’ that he outlines in his discourse on old age, Nursi’s contemplation of Divine mercy as a consolation for the rigours and fears of old age took place as he gazed down on the world from a great height – in this case, a mountain – and at the time of the afternoon prayer, late one autumn. Looking down at the world implies both breadth of vision and summation: from his physically elevated position, the spiritually deflated thinker is able to take in the whole sweep of humanity below, while the lateness of the day is emblematic of the agedness of the both the earth itself and its observer. Suddenly, Nursi, writes, he was overcome with sorrow, and his mind was flooded with dark thoughts. For I saw that I had become old. The day too had grown old, and so had the year; the world itself had aged. As the time of departure from the world and separation from those I loved drew ever closer, the realisation of my own old age shook me severely. But then all of a sudden, divine mercy unfolded in such a way that it transformed that plaintive sadness and separation into a powerful hope and shining light of solace. To those who, like me, have grown old, I say this: the All-Compassionate Creator presents himself to us in a hundred places in the All-Wise Quran as the Most Merciful of the Merciful, and always sends His mercy to the assistance of living creatures on the face of the earth who seek it, and every year fills the spring with innumerable bounties and gifts from the Unseen, sending them to us who are needy for sustenance, and manifests His mercy in greater abundance relatively to our weakness and impotence. For us in our old age, therefore, His mercy is our greatest hope and most powerful light. It may be obtained by forming a relation with the Most Merciful One through belief, and performing the five daily prayers, by being obedient to Him.11

Divine mercy, then – mention of which occurs numerous times throughout the Quran – is posited by Nursi as being a failsafe source of hope for those who are old and who approach

471

The Qur’an Revealed  the end of their lives with trepidation. Instances of God’s mercy, Nursi writes, are scattered throughout creation: all it takes for one to benefit from that mercy is to accept its source and to commune with its Giver, through acknowledgment, belief and submission.

Following in the footsteps of the Prophet

Awareness that one is growing old often comes suddenly. Nursi describes how he awoke – metaphorically, perhaps, but maybe even literally – from the ‘sleep of the night of youth’ into the morning of old age, realising at once that his life was rushing towards the grave as though hurtling down a slope. He was reminded at this point of the verse by Niyazi Misri: Each day a stone from the edifice of my being cracks and falls to the ground; O heedless one! You slumber on, unaware that your building is in ruins! Although my heart desires immortality, reality calls for the rotting of my flesh; I am afflicted with a disease that even Luqman the Wise cannot cure!12

Faced with an affliction that even the most adept of physicians can do nothing about, Nursi looked for a light, and found it in the intercession of the Prophet. Then suddenly the light and intercession of the Glorious Prophet (PBWH), the tongue, model, exemplar, herald and representative of divine compassion, and the gift of guidance he brought to mankind, soothed and healed the wound I had supposed to be incurable and endless. Yes, respected elderly men and women who feel their old age like I do! We are departing, there is no use in deceiving ourselves. Even if we close our eyes to it, we will not remain here. There is a mobilization. The land of the Intermediate Realm, which appears to us to be dark and full of separation due to the gloomy delusions which arise from heedlessness and, in part, from the people of misguidance, is the meeting-place of friends. It is the world where we shall meet with foremost God’s Beloved (PBWH), and with all our friends.13

Nursi consoles his readers with the promise of union with the ‘trainer of spirits and teacher of minds’ who has exercised spiritual leadership over the Muslim community since the advent of the Quran. We are going to the world of the beloved of your hearts, to whose book of good works, in accordance with the meaning of “the cause is like the doer,” is every day added the equivalent of all the good works performed by his community, in accordance with the principle which says that the ‘the cause [of a good deed] is like the doer [of that deed]’. We are going to the world of one who is the means by which the elevated divine purposes in the universe are accomplished and the high value of beings realized. According to authentic narrations, when he came into this world he exclaimed “My community, my community!” So too at the Last Judgement, when everyone is thinking only of himself, he will again declare: “My community, my community!”, and with sacred, noble self-sacrifice hasten with his intercession to its assistance.14

Intercession, however, does not consist in the mere pulling of strings: it is, as Nursi points out, something which one aspires to by treading sincerely in the footsteps of the Prophet:

472

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology Thus, the way to share in the Prophet’s intercession and profit from his light, and be saved from the darkness of the Intermediate Realm, is to follow his glorious practices.15

The Quran as a source of hope

If the intercession of the Prophet through the adoption of his sunna is a sure source of hope for the elderly, the ‘intercession’ of the Quran through the acceptance of its truths is, for Nursi, an equally formidable wellspring of succour and support. This truth became most apparent to him during a period of exile, when his need for assistance and encouragement was most acute. I felt a profound sorrow and was filled with regret and penitence. I felt that I had wasted the fruits of my life’s capital on the giddiness of youth, which I saw as nothing but a heap of sins and mistakes. Echoing Niyazi Misri, I cried out: I had concluded no trade; the capital of life was all lost; I came to the road to find the caravan had moved on, unaware. Lamenting, I continued down the road, all alone, a stranger; My eyes weeping, my heart in anguish, my mind bewildered, unaware. I was yearning for help when, suddenly, the All-Wise Quran came to my aid. It opened a door of hope so powerful and afforded a light of consolation so true that it could have dispelled despair and darkness a hundred times more intense than mine.16

It is inconceivable, Nursi asserts, that the Creator Who fashions the cosmos with such order and equilibrium, and Who makes known His arts through His works, should not make Himself known to His creatures through the spoken word. That spoken word, he says, is enshrined in the Quran, and those whose ties to the world are coming to an end may find solace in its pages. For it is a miracle in forty respects and is at every instant on the tongues of at least a hundred million people. It scatters light and every letter of it affords at least ten merits and rewards, and fruits of Paradise and lights in the Intermediate Realm, and sometimes ten thousand, and sometimes – through the mystery of the Night of Power – thirty thousand. There is no book in the universe to compete with it in this respect and no one could put one forward. Since this Quran which we have is the Word of the AllGlorious Creator of the heavens and earth, proceeding from His absolute dominicality, the tremendousness of His Godhead, and His all-encompassing mercy, and is His decree and a source of His mercy, you should adhere to it. For in it is found a cure for every ill, a light for every darkness and a hope for all despair. And the key to this eternal treasury is belief and submission to God, and listening to the Quran and accepting it, and reciting it.17

Looking to the Hereafter

Nursi’s contemplation on belief in the hereafter as a salve to those who are drawing ever nearer to death came to him, like other ‘hopes’, while he was engaged in meditation high up,

473

The Qur’an Revealed  overlooking the city below. This particular incident took place on Yușa Tepesi, a hill located on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, near a tomb in which it is believed by many that the prophet Joshua (Yușa) is buried. As I gazed around me at the broad horizon, I cast an inward glance down from the forty-fifth branch of the tree of my life to its lower levels. I saw that down on the lower branches of each year were the countless corpses of those I had known and had loved and with whom I had been connected.18

Daunted by separation from so many of his friends and relatives who had died over the years, Nursi “sought solace, a light, a door leading to hope.” That hope came in the form of a renewal of his belief in the hereafter, bringing with it what he describes as an inextinguishable light to dispel the darkness of desperation. And to those of my brothers and sisters who are elderly like me, I say this: the hereafter exists, it is everlasting and it is a far better world than this one. And since the One who created us is both All-Wise and All-Compassionate, we should not complain and bemoan our old age. On the contrary, we should be content with it, for with old age comes the spiritual maturity gained through belief and worship, together with a sign that one will soon be released from the toils and duties of life and despatched to the world of mercy in order to rest.19

Belief in the hereafter, Nursi continues, is something to which countless prophets and saints have attested, some of them by means of presential knowledge or visionary experience. With regard to the existence of a world beyond the present realm there is the kind of unanimity of opinion, Nursi says, that banishes all possible doubt. Moreover, the creation itself speaks of the hereafter to come with the tongue of mute eloquence, for “through the manifestations they display in this world, all of the names of the Wise Maker of the universe self-evidently necessitate an everlasting realm.”20 Furthermore, the pre-eternal power and boundless, eternal wisdom of God, which allow nothing to be in vain, raise to life each spring the countless corpses of the dead trees on the face of the earth and cause them to manifest life after death: with the command of “Be!”, hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species are revivified, exemplifying the resurrection of the dead. These annual resurrections clearly point to the the existence of the hereafter, as does the eternal mercy and perpetual favour which, with perfect compassion and in wondrous fashion, provide the livelihoods of all living beings in need of sustenance and in a brief time in spring display their uncountable varieties of adornment and decoration. All of these point to the existence of the hereafter. And then there is man, the most perfect fruit of the universe and its Creator’s most loved creature. Of all creatures, man stands out as one who is characterised by an intense, unshakeable and constant desire for immortality, with hopes and dreams that extend to eternity. Such a desire provides ample evidence that after this transient world there will be an eternal one, a realm of everlasting bliss.21

Having used arguments from both prophetic experience and the manifestations of the Divine names in the creation itself, Nursi then turns to the revelation, describing belief in the hereafter as its most significant message.

474

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology The most important thing the all-wise Quran teaches us is belief in the hereafter. This belief is so powerful, and yields such hope and solace, that even if a person were to be overwhelmed by old age a thousand times over, the consolation arising from this belief would be more than enough to dispel any fear or grief. Thus those of us who are elderly should love our old age and say “All praise be to God for perfect belief!”22

Banishing the sense of exile

It may be argued that the believer is, from the existential perspective, wholly justified in seeing himself as an exile: cast out of paradise and subjected to the test of finitude and mortality, he may indeed look upon life in this earthly abode as a form of incarceration and suffering, cut off as he is from his roots which are grounded in the true Source of all being. The Prophetic Tradition, “This world is the prison of the believers and the paradise of the unbelievers” may indeed allude partly to the sense of isolation and estrangement that anyone committed to self-knowledge and God-awareness may feel whenever the sheer alterity of the human condition and its apparent distance from God makes itself felt. How much more distressing, then, must it be when one’s existential exile is exacerbated, as Nursi’s was, by a series of punitive, physical expulsions which force one from place to place like an involuntary nomad. Nursi was no stranger to the prison cell, or to house arrest and exile, but in all of these situations stopped at nothing in his search for a way out, spiritually if not physically. Nursi’s way out was his habit of mindful recollection and self-questioning, and during one particularly distressful period of exile near Barla, he turned his attention to the question of loneliness, alienation and death. One night on the small platform at the top of a tall pine-tree on the summit of the Mount of Pines, I tried to find a light to dispel my loneliness. Old age recalled to me three or four exiles, one within the other. As is described in the Sixth Letter, the melancholy sound of the rustling, murmuring trees on that lonely, silent, distant night affected me grievously in my old age and exile. Old age gave me the following thought: like the day changed into this black grave and the world donned its black shroud, the daytime of your life, too, will turn into night, and the daytime of the world turn into the night of the Intermediate Realm, and summertime of life will be transformed into the winter night-time of death. It whispered this in my heart’s ear. My soul was then obliged to say: Yes, I am far from my native land, but being separated from all those I have loved during my fifty years’ lifetime who have died, and remaining weeping for them, is a far more grievous and sorrowful exile than the exile from my country. Moreover, I am drawing close to a much sadder and more painful exile than the melancholy exile of the night and the mountain: old age informs me that I am approaching the time of separation from the world.23

Overwhelmed by the notion of exile in the world giving way to exile from the world, Nursi writes that he was saved from despair by the light of belief, which “came to my assistance and afforded such a familiarity that even if my desolation had increased a thousand-fold, that belief would have been enough to console it.” Belief in God, Nursi is saying, serves to banish forever the notion of life as exile, and death as eternal separation.

475

The Qur’an Revealed  And so, my elderly brothers and sisters! Since we have a Compassionate Creator, there can be no exile for us! Since He exists, everything exists for us. Since He exists, the angels exist. The world is not empty. Lonely mountains and empty deserts are full of Almighty God’s servants. Apart from His conscious servants, stones and trees become like familiar friends when seen through His light and on His account. They may converse with us and give us enjoyment. Yes, evidences and witnesses to the number of beings in the universe and to the number of the letters of this vast book of the world testify to the existence of our All-Compassionate, Munificent, Intimate, Loving Creator, Maker and Protector; they show us His mercy to the number of living creatures’ members, foods and bounties, which may be a means of receiving His compassion, mercy and favour, and which indicate His court. Impotence and weakness are the most acceptable intercessor at His court. And old age is precisely the time of impotence and weakness. So one should not feel resentful at old age, which is thus an acceptable intercessor at a court, but love it.24

While there is God, Nursi is saying, there can be no loneliness. The key, as with all of Nursi’s ‘hopes’, is the way in which the cosmos is viewed. Seen through the prism of unbelief or unawareness, life – particularly in old age – appears like a desert of nothingness stretching out as far as the eye can see. Seen through the prism of belief, however, every grain of sand in that desert acquires a tongue with which it speaks of its Creator. Achieving such vision is not easy, of course, and comes only with the nurturing of faith and self-awareness. Once achieved, however, all things become bearable and, indeed, lovable, including, as Nursi points out, old age.

Turning darkness into light

For Nursi, the slowly encroaching darkness of old age was compounded by his perception that everything around him was ageing too, and falling into desuetude. He recalls how, having accepted an invitation from “the worldly” to visit Ankara, he climbed to the top of the citadel there, which he perceived to be even more aged and dilapidated than he was. It was the end of autumn, and that fact, together with my old age, the citadel’s old age, mankind’s old age, the old age of the glorious Ottoman Empire, the demise of the Caliphate, and the old age of the world itself all caused me to look in a most grieved, piteous and melancholy state in that lofty citadel at the valleys of the past and the mountains of the future. As I experienced an utterly black state of mind in Ankara encompassed by four or five layers of the darknesses of old age one within the other, I sought a light, a solace, a hope.25

At first, consolation was not forthcoming. Nursi writes that as he looked to the right, i.e. to the past, he saw his father and forefather and the whole of the human race “in the form of a vast grave”, which served only to further darken his gloom. Looking to the left, i.e. to the future, he saw another huge grave, this time prepared for himself, his contemporaries and future generations. He looked to the present and saw a metaphorical coffin, bearing his halfdead body; he looked up to the ‘top of the tree’ of his life and down to its ‘roots’, and again saw nothing apart from doom and despair. Behind him, the transient world had disappeared into nothingness, while his future seemed to be an open grave, ‘watching me with its mouth

476

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology agape’. Nursi realised that apart from a limited, almost inconsequential will as his support, he had nothing with which to face the horrors that seemed to loom from all directions. And that will, he realised, was unable to banish the sorrows of the past or be of any benefit for the pains of the future. But then, as I was struggling in the horror, desolation, darkness and despair proceeding from these six directions, the lights of belief which shine in the sky of the Quran of Miraculous Exposition suddenly came to my assistance. They lit up and illuminated those six directions to such a degree that if the terrors and darkness I had seen increased a hundredfold, the light would still have been sufficient to meet them. One by one it transformed all those horrors into solace and the desolation into familiarity. It was as follows: Belief rent asunder the desolate view of the past as a vast grave, and showed it with utter certainty to be a familiar, enlightened gathering of friends. And belief showed the future, which had appeared in the form of a huge grave to my heedless eyes, to be most certainly a banquet of the Most Merciful One in delightful palaces of bliss. And belief rent the view of present time as a coffin, as it had appeared to my heedless view, and showed it with certainty to be a place of trade for the hereafter and a glittering guesthouse of the All-Merciful One. And belief showed with utter certainty that the only fruit at the top of the tree of life was not a corpse as had appeared to my neglectful eye, but that my spirit, which would manifest eternal life and was designated for eternal happiness, would leave its worn-out home to travel around the stars. And through its mystery, belief showed that my bones and the earth that was the source of my creation were not valueless pulverized bones trampled underfoot, but that the earth was the door to divine mercy and veil before the halls of Paradise.26

What Nursi is saying here is that the eye of despair and the eye of hope simply see differently: they do not see different things. Looking at the past through the prism of fear, Nursi saw a world that was ‘tumbling into nothingness’; looking through the prism of hope, he saw it as a vast assemblage of ‘missives of the Eternally Besought One and pages of decorations and embroideries, glorifying God’. Similarly, seen through the jaundiced eye of the hopeless, the future may well appear to be nothing but a bottomless pit waiting to drag one into non-existence, but seen through the eye of hope and trust, it is a gateway which leads to ‘existence, a realm of light and eternal bliss’.27 Moreover, by means of belief, man’s meagre, insubstantial faculty of will becomes connected to the absolute power of the Divine and is “connected to a boundless mercy in the face of those innumerable enemies and layers of darkness.”28 Indeed, belief is a kind of passport in the hand of man’s will, and although this human weapon of will is in itself both short, powerless and deficient, just as when a soldier utilizes his partial strength on account of the state, he performs duties far exceeding his own strength, so too through the mystery of belief, if the limited faculty of will is used in the name of Almighty God and in His way, it may gain also a paradise as broad as five hundred years. And belief takes from the hands of the body the reins of the faculty of will, which cannot penetrate to the past and future, and hands them over to the heart and spirit. Since the sphere of their life is not restricted to present time like the body, and

477

The Qur’an Revealed  included within it are a great many years from the past and a great many years from the future, the will ceases being limited and acquires universality. Through the strength of belief it may enter the deepest valleys of the past and repel the darkness of its sorrows; so too with the light of belief it may rise as far as the farthest mountains of the future, and remove its fears.29

Belief, then, is the light which illumines the whole of one’s surroundings, turning ghostly spectres of the past and future into figures of beauty and pleasure. Old age, Nursi says, impels man even more to brighten his conceptual darkness with the light of belief and seek out these treasures, and thus rather than complaining about the end of one’s life, endless thanks should instead be given for it.30

Accepting one’s impotence

To be able to derive strength from the acknowledgment of one’s own impotence is a key teaching of Muslim spirituality, particularly among those with gnostic or Sufi leanings, and Nursi was no stranger to the idea: indeed, acceptance of the fact that man is, both in and of himself, really nothing very substantial at all is a theme which may be said to underpin most of the Risale-i Nur. However, it is one thing to accept one’s existential impotence intellectually and quite another to experience it physically, as it were, as old age encroaches. In reality, of course, if man is inherently impotent, he is impotent regardless of whether he is young and apparently vigorous and strong, or old and actually weak and needy. The key, Nursi would no doubt have said, is to realise one’s impotence before the appearance of strength disappears: one ought, as the Tradition has it, to die before one dies.31 I was a prisoner-of-war in the distant province of Kosturma in north-eastern Russia. Tired of the company of fellow officers, I craved solitude, but could not wander outside without permission. Sometimes they would take me to a Tatar mosque beside the Volga, and I would sleep there, alone. Spring was approaching and during the long, late winter nights, I would stay awake, listening to the sad plashing of the Volga and the mirthless patter of the rain, which seemed to have waken me temporarily from a deep sleep of heedlessness. I did not consider myself to be old, although the Great War had aged all of us. For those were days that, as the verse says, were enough to turn the hair of children grey.32 I was forty but felt eighty, and in those long dark nights of sorrowful exile, I despaired of ever seeing my homeland again. I saw how alone I was and, considering my powerlessness, began to lose hope. It was then that assistance arrived in the form of the Quranic verse God is enough for us; and how excellent a guardian is He.33 Weeping, I cried out: “I am a stranger, I am alone, I am weak, I am powerless: I seek mercy, I seek forgiveness, I seek help from You, O my God!”34

Nursi writes that his admission of impotence was to become such a potent intercessor at the Divine court that he marvelled at it for the rest of his life. For several days after his supplication, he was able to escape from prison in the most unexpected manner. Not knowing a word of Russian, he was able to leave Kosturma and make his way home, passing stealthily but with great ease through Poland and Austria before arriving in Istanbul, without ever really knowing how his escape had come to pass. It was his admission of

478

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology impotence, Nursi later wrote, that attracted the grace and mercy needed for his escape from incarceration. There is indeed strength, Nursi tells his aged readers, in admitting one’s innate weakness. O elderly men and women! Know that the weakness and powerlessness of old age are means for attracting divine grace and mercy. The manifestation of mercy on the face of the earth demonstrates this truth most clearly, just as I have observed it in myself on numerous occasions. For the weakest and most powerless of animals are the young. But then it is they who receive the sweetest and most beautiful manifestation of mercy. The powerlessness of a young bird in the nest at the top of a tree attracts the manifestation of mercy to employ its mother like an obedient soldier. Its mother flies all around and brings it its food. When with its wings growing strong the nestling forgets its impotence, its mother tells it to go and find its own food, and no longer listens to it. Just as this mystery of mercy is in force for the young, so is it in force for the elderly, who resemble young in regard to weakness and impotence. I have had experiences which have led me to form the unshakeable conviction that just as the sustenance of infants is sent to them in wondrous fashion by divine mercy on account of their impotence, being made to flow forth from the springs of their mothers’ breasts, so too the sustenance of the believing elderly, who acquire a kind of innocence, is sent in the form of plenty.35

Nursi then quotes a Prophetic Tradition which states that “If it were not for your elderly folk with their bent backs, calamities would have descended on you one after the other.” In other words, the source of succour and plenty in a household is its elderly inhabitants, and it is they who preserve that household from the visitation of afflictions. It is for this reason, Nursi says, that one of the most significant ethical precepts of the Quran concerns care and respect for the elderly: Whether one or both of them attain old age in your life, say not to them a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honour. And out of kindness, lower the wing of humility, and say: “My Sustainer! Bestow on them Your mercy even as they cherished me in childhood.”36

Old age, then, is to be seen as a source of bounty in Islam, provided that the elderly are in a milieu in which sincere belief is prevalent. In such circumstances, Nursi says, the elderly receive “constant mercy and respect from divine grace and human feeling in place of the fleeting physical pleasures and appetites of youth.” Since this is the case, he says, which elderly believer would want to give up the lasting spiritual pleasures of compassion for the ephemeral physical pleasures of youth? For my part, I can say with utmost certainty that even if they were to give me ten years of the Old Said’s youth, I would not give up a single year of the New Said’s old age. I am content with my old age, and you too should be content with yours!37

Knowing that death cannot be the end

The inevitability of death is often best understood when contemplating the absence of those who have experienced it: it is possibly in order to facilitate such contemplation that Muslim

479

The Qur’an Revealed  tradition places such importance on the visiting of graves. Nursi recounts how he gained presential knowledge of his own mortality while looking at the gravestones in the Eyüp Sultan cemetery in Istanbul.38 “As I looked at the graveyard,” he writes, “the following was imparted to my heart”: This graveyard around you holds Istanbul a hundred times over, for Istanbul has been emptied here a hundred times. You cannot escape from the command of the All-Wise and Powerful One who has poured all the people of Istanbul into here; you are no exception; you too will depart.39

Cloistering himself in a small room in the Eyüp Mosque complex, Nursi pondered his state, realising that just as he was a guest in the mosque, he was a guest in Istanbul, and just as he was a guest in Istanbul, he was a guest on earth. And all guests must leave eventually. While in this state of mind, my heart was overwhelmed by a most pitiful, grievous sorrow. I was not losing only one or two friends; I would be parted from the thousands of people I loved in Istanbul, and I would also part from Istanbul, which I also loved much. And just as I would be parted from hundreds of thousands of friends in this world, so I would leave the beautiful world, with which I was captivated and I loved. While pondering over this, I climbed once more to that spot in the graveyard, where all the dead of Istanbul appeared to me to be walking around. Moreover, all of the living people I could see at that time appeared to be corpses walking around. My imagination told me: some of the dead in the graveyard appear to be walking around as though on the cinema-screen, so you should see the people of the present, who are bound to enter the graveyard in the future, as having entered it; they too are corpses, walking around.40

Nursi’s gloom at seeing nothing but death around him disappear was eventually dispelled, he says, by the light of the Quran, which led him not only to accept the inevitability of death but also to see it as something to be welcomed and embraced. Guided by the Quran, I was able to reason with myself as follows. When I was a prisonerof-war in Kosturma, I had one or two officer friends, and I knew that eventually they would go back to Istanbul. Now if one of them had asked me, “Do you want to go to Istanbul, or to stay here?”, it is obvious that I would have chosen to go to Istanbul. For out of a thousand and one friends, nine hundred and ninety-nine were already in Istanbul. Only one or two were in Kosturma, and they too would leave. Thus going to Istanbul would not be a sad affair, and it would not signal any kind of bitter separation. In just the same way, from your childhood to your present age, ninety-nine out of a hundred of those you love have migrated to the graveyard, which terrifies you. You have one or two friends still in this world, and they too will depart. Your death in this world is not separation; it is union: it is to be reunited with all those friends. For most certainly and self-evidently the All-Generous Maker who adorns this world with innumerable sorts of gifts and bounties, and demonstrates His dominicality munificently and compassionately, and preserves even the least significant things like seeds, would not annihilate or send to nothingness or waste man as unkindly and purposelessly as it superficially appears, for he is the most perfect, comprehensive, important and beloved among His creatures. Rather, like the seeds a farmer scatters on

480

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology the earth, the Compassionate Creator temporarily casts that beloved creature of His under the ground, which is a door of mercy, in order to produce shoots in another life.41

After receiving this reminder from the Quran, Nursi writes, the graveyard became more familiar to him than any other place in Istanbul, bringing home to him the fact that one should look favourably on old age, illness and death. For these are not in the least disagreeable, he says: if there are things that are disagreeable, they are ‘sin, vice, innovations and misguidance’. When seen through the prism of belief, old age and death signal a welcome release from the toils and duties of earthy life. Moreover, Nursi adds, the dominicality and generosity of God would not allow to be wasted or despatched to nothingness the noblest and most perfect of His creations. It may be that man will enter the earth for a while, but like the seeds which lie hidden in winter in order to give out shoots in spring, he will emerge eventually into a new and much fuller life. One is reminded here of Rumi’s famous poem about the unborn child in the womb: If anyone were to say to the embryo in the womb, ‘Outside is a world well-ordered, A pleasant earth, broad and long, wherein are a thousand delights and many things to eat; Mountains and seas and plains, fragrant orchards, gardens and sown fields, A sky very lofty and full of light, sunshine and moonbeams and innumerable stars; Its wonders are beyond description: why dost thou stay, drinking blood, in this dungeon of filth and pain?’ – The embryo, being what it is, would turn away in utter disbelief; for the blind have no imagination. So, in this world, when the saints tell of a world without scent and hue, none of the vulgar hearkens to them; sensual desire is a barrier huge and stout - even as the embryo’s craving for the blood that nourishes it in its low abodes debarred it from perception of the external world, since it knows no food but blood.42

Habituated to the dark constraints of the womb and knowing only blood as its food, the embryo would no doubt consider the description of this world beyond the womb to be nothing but a delusion. Similarly, man’s habituation to the life of this fleeting, phenomenal world serves to blind him to the realities of that which is said to lie beyond. For Nursi, however, it is clear that God’s munificence would not allow beings to enjoy a brief existence in this world and then despatch them to nothingness, just as it does not allow an embryo to exist for nine months within the tenebrous confines of the womb and then, without bringing it into the ‘afterlife’ of the phenomenal world, consign it to non-existence.

Giving up attachments

Just as the embryo in Rumi’s verse scoffed at the notion of giving up its attachment to the womb in order to embrace a world which it was unable to conceptualise and unwilling to believe in, man’s attachments to the world often prevent him from conceptualising anything other than this present, earthly life, and act as a barrier between him and the acceptance of death. Nursi’s meditation on attachment came, as with other meditations, on a hill. But this hill was Camlıca, to Nursi ‘the most beautiful place in Istanbul’, and thus perhaps a fitting place in which to contemplate the tyrannies of the material ties that bind.

481

The Qur’an Revealed  I had returned from captivity and was living in a villa on the hill of Camlica with my nephew, Abdurrahman.43 From the point of view of worldly life, you could say that our position was very fortunate indeed. I was no longer a prisoner-of-war and in the Darü’l-Hikmet we were successfully propagating knowledge in an elevated way which suited our profession as scholars. The honour and esteem afforded me were far greater than I deserved. In fact, everything was perfect for me. I was with my nephew, who was extremely intelligent and self-sacrificing, and who was my student, my servant, my scribe and my spiritual son. But then one day, still considering myself to be more fortunate than anyone else in the world, I looked in the mirror and I saw grey hairs in my hair and beard. Suddenly, the spiritual awakening I had experienced during captivity recommenced. I began to study the circumstances and causes to which I felt genuine attachment and which I supposed were the source of happiness in this world. But whichever of them I studied, I saw that it was rotten; it was not worth the attachment; it was deceptive. Around that time, I had also suffered an unexpected and unimaginable act of disloyalty and unfaithfulness at the hands of a friend whom I had supposed to be most loyal. I felt disgust at the world. I said to myself: “Have I been altogether deceived? I see that many people look with envy at our situation, which in reality should be pitied. Are all these people crazy, or am I the one who has gone crazy and imagine everyone else to be so?” This awakening enabled me to see the transitory nature of all the things to which I had become attached. I looked at myself, and I saw myself to be utterly impotent. And then my spirit, which desires immortality and is infatuated with ephemeral beings to the point of imagining them to be everlasting, declared: “Since my physical body is transient, what good can come of these ephemeral things? Since I am powerless, what can I expect from these powerless things? What I need is one who is Eternal and Enduring, one who is Pre-Eternal and All-Powerful, who will provide a remedy for my ills.” And so I began to search.44

Nursi’s meditation on the hill of Camlıca replicates in essence the meditation of Abraham as recorded in the Quran.45 Having rejected the graven images of his forefathers, Abraham is himself misled temporarily by the apparent power of the heavenly bodies, to which he mistakenly attributes creatorship. He sees a star above his head and declares, momentarily, that ‘This is my Lord’. When the star fades from vision, however, he realises the folly of attributing power to something which clearly has none. He makes the same mistake with regard to the moon and the sun, realising only when they disappear from vision that they cannot be the source of his being. This leads him to declare I love not those that set,46 which is a repudiation not only of the idols of his ancestors but also the efficacy of material causes. Nursi’s realisation of the depth of his attachment to transitory things comes with an acute awareness of the extent to which this attachment is facilitated – and indeed encouraged – by what Nursi calls ‘the philosophical sciences’. In Nursian parlance, ‘philosophy’ is the standard shorthand for any of the intellectual disciplines – including, of course, philosophy itself - which is approached from the perspective of the ‘self-referential’ (ma‘nā-i ismῑ) rather than the ‘Other-indicative’ (ma‘nā-i h. arfῑ).47

482

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology Unfortunately, up to this time I had filled my mind with the sciences of philosophy as well as the Islamic sciences, and quite in error had imagined those philosophical sciences to be the source of progress and means of illumination. However, those philosophical matters had greatly dirtied my spirit and been an obstacle to my spiritual development. Suddenly, through Almighty God’s mercy and munificence, the sacred wisdom of the All-Wise Quran 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. In the same way it may also cleanse the spirits of certain elderly people which have been dirtied in their youth, and their hearts sickened and souls spoilt, by matters which, though called Western philosophy or the sciences of civilization, are in part misguidance and in part trivia. And through divine unity, they may be saved from evil of Satan and the soul.48

Nursi then embarks on what is basically a lengthy summation of his findings regarding the inefficacy of material causes in his Treatise On Nature. Like the greatest thing, the tiniest and most particular proceeds directly from the power of the Creator of the whole universe and emerges from His treasury. It cannot occur in any other way. As for causes, they are merely a veil. For in regard to art and creation, sometimes the creatures we suppose to be the smallest and least important are greater than the largest creatures. Even if a fly is not of greater art than a chicken, it is not of lesser art. In which case, no difference should be made between great and small. Either all should be divided between material causes, or all should be attributed at once to a single Being. And just as the former is impossible, the latter is necessary and imperative.   For if beings are attributed to a single Being, that is to a Pre-Eternal AllPowerful One, since His knowledge, the existence of which is certain by reason of the order and wisdom in all beings, encompasses everything; and since the measure of all things is determined in His knowledge; and since beings which are infinitely full of art continuously come into existence from nothing with infinite ease; and since in accordance with innumerable powerful evidences that All-Knowing All-Powerful One is able to create anything whatever through the command of “‘Be!’ and it is” as simply as striking a match – since this is the case, the extraordinary ease and facility which we observe arises from that all-encompassing knowledge and vast power. For example, if a special solution is applied to a book written in invisible ink, that huge book suddenly demonstrates its existence visibly and makes itself read. In just the same way, the particular form and appointed measure of everything is determined in the all-encompassing knowledge of the Pre-Eternal All-Powerful One. Through the command of “‘Be!’ and it is” and with that limitless power of His and penetrating will, like spreading the solution on the writing, the Absolutely All-Powerful One applies a manifestation of His power to the being which exists as knowledge and with utter ease and facility gives it external existence; He displays and makes read the embroideries of His wisdom. If all things are not all together attributed to that Pre-Eternal All-Powerful One, the One Knowing of All Things, then as well as having to gather together in a particular measure from most of the varieties of beings in the world the body of the tiniest thing like a fly, the particles which work in that tiny fly’s body will have to know the mysteries of the fly’s creation and its perfect art in all its minutest details. For as all the intelligent agree, natural causes and physical causes cannot create out of nothing.

483

The Qur’an Revealed  In which case, if they do create, they will gather the being together. And since they will gather it together – whatever animate being it is, there are within it samples of most of the elements and most of the varieties of beings, for living creatures are quite simply like a seed or essence of the universe – it will of course be necessary for them to gather together a seed from the whole tree and an animate being from the whole face of the earth, sifting them through a fine sieve and measuring them with the most sensitive balance. And since natural causes are ignorant and lifeless, and have no knowledge with which to determine a plan, index, model or programme according to which they can smelt and pour the particles which enter the immaterial mould of the being in question, so they do not disperse and spoil its order, it is clear how far it is from possibility and reason to suppose that, without mould or measure, they can make the particles of the elements which flow like floods remain one on the other in the form of an orderly mass without dispersing, for everything has a single form and measure amid possibilities without calculation or count. For sure, everyone who does not suffer from blindness in his heart will see it. Yes, in consequence of this truth, according to the meaning of the verse Those on whom you call besides God cannot create [even] a fly, if they all met together for the purpose49 if all material causes were to gather together and if they possessed will, they could not gather together the being of a single fly and its systems and organs with their particular balance. And even if they could gather them together, they could not make them remain in the specified measure of the being. And even if they could make them remain thus, they could not make those minute particles, which are constantly being renewed and coming into existence and working, work regularly and in order. In which case, self-evidently, causes cannot claim ownership of things. That is to say, their True Owner is someone else.50

For Nursi, then, the fact that all things appear in the phenomenal world with infinite artistry and ease demonstrates that they are the works of a single Creator who is pre-eternal, omnipotent and omniscient; in the absence of such a being, he argues, it would be impossible for a single thing to come into existence. But Nursi’s discussion of material causes here should not be seen simply as just another reiteration of a particular theological stance. What comes across from this particular meditation is his own realisation of the impotence not only of himself but of all other material beings and causes, together with his discovery of the security that is to be had from acknowledging the source of real power, namely God, the ‘Causer of causes’ (musabbib al-asbāb). For what I need is a Creator and Sustainer who possesses the power to know the least thoughts of my heart and my most secret wishes; and as He will answer the most hidden needs of my spirit, so he will transform the mighty earth into the hereafter in order to give me eternal happiness, and remove this world and put the hereafter in its place; and create the heavens as He creates a fly; and as He fastens the sun as an eye in the face of the sky, so he can situate a particle in the pupil of my eye. For one who cannot create a fly cannot intervene in the thoughts of my heart and cannot hear the pleas of my spirit. One who cannot create the heavens, cannot give me eternal happiness. In which case, my Sustainer is He who both purifies my heart’s thoughts, and like He fills and empties the skies with clouds in an hour, so he will transform this world into the hereafter, make Paradise, and open its doors to me, bidding me to enter.51

484

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology The emphasis throughout this passage is on human needs, and the inability of material causes to fulfil them. Nursi wants a creator who will be able not only to know the innermost needs of his heart and spirit but also to answer them, and it is clear that such a being is not to be found amongst those who are themselves created and thus existentially impotent. Like Abraham, Nursi cannot depend for the fulfilment of his needs on those who set, for those who set are themselves in need. The only solution for Nursi is, as Abraham realised, to set his face towards One Who is above need, and Who is thus able to satisfy the needs of all others. And it is a solution that he suggests will work for his elderly peers too, should they choose to follow the correct path. To my elderly brothers and sisters who, as a result of misfortune, have like my soul spent part of their lives on lightless Western materialist philosophy and science, I would say this. Understand from the sacred decree of “There is no god but He”, perpetually uttered by the tongue of the Quran, just how powerful, true, unshakeable, unstoppable, unchanging and sacred a pillar of belief it is, and how it disperses all spiritual darkness and cures all spiritual wounds! O you elderly men and women! Since you have belief and since you pray and offer supplications which illuminate and increase belief, you can regard your old age as eternal youth. For through it you can gain eternal youth. The old age which in truth is cold, burdensome, ugly, dark and full of pain is the old age of the people of misguidance: it is they who should weep with sighs and regrets. While you, respected believing elderly people, should joyfully offer thanks saying: “All praise and thanks be to God for every situation!”52

Attachment to material causes – or, in the words of Attar, to mortals – is bound to bring nothing but sorrow, as Nursi points out, and it is only through the recognition of the source of true power – the ‘Causer of causes’ – that the “spiritual darkness” of old age can be turned into light and a source of hope.

Embracing the true immortal

If inordinate attachment to material causes is as deleterious to the human soul as Nursi claims it to be, one can scarcely imagine the extent of the negative effect on spiritual well-being that inordinate attachment to other human beings must bring about. The poet Attar’s line, ‘Attachment to mortals only brings sorrow’ is one that Nursi appears to have been familiar with from a relatively early age, and it is one that finds particularly poignant expression in his description of the relationship he had with his nephew, Abdurrahman. I had been exiled in Barla and was in a truly wretched state. I was forbidden any kind of communication with others and I was suffering from the pains of homesickness, illness and old age. Then, in His perfect mercy, Almighty God bestowed a light on me concerning the subtle points and mysteries of the All-Wise Quran which became a source of consolation and helped me to forget my pitiful, sad state. I was able to forget my native land, my friends and relations, but alas, there was one person I could not forget and that was Abdurrahman, who was not only my nephew and spiritual son, but also my most devoted student and my bravest friend. We hadn’t seen each other for six or seven years: he had no idea where I was so that he could hasten to help and console me, and I

485

The Qur’an Revealed  had no idea about his situation so that I could correspond with him and we could confide in each other. Now in my old age, I was in need of someone loyal and self-sacrificing like him. Then out of the blue someone gave me a letter. I opened it and saw it was from Abdurrahman, written in a way which showed his true self. It made me weep, and it still makes me weep. He wrote in the letter seriously and sincerely that he was disgusted with the pleasures of the world and that his greatest desire was to reach me and look to my needs in my old age just as I had looked to his when he was young. He also wanted to help me with his capable pen in spreading the mysteries of the Quran, my true duty in this world. He even wrote in his letter: “Send me twenty or thirty treatises and I’ll write out twenty or thirty copies of each and get others to write them.”53

The letter gave Nursi fresh hope. Consoling himself with the thought that he had found Abdurrahman again, he began to forget the pains and privations of his exile and started to look to the future. Then, some weeks later, Nursi received the news of Abdurrahman’s death. The effect on him was devastating. I was so shaken that five years later I am still under its effect. It afflicted me with a grief, sorrow and sense of separation far exceeding the torturous captivity, aloneness, exile, old age and illness I was then suffering. Half of my private world had died with the death of my mother, and now with Abdurrahman’s death, the other half died. My ties with the world were now completely cut. For if he had lived, he could have been both a powerful help in my duties, which looked to the hereafter, and a worthy successor to fill my place completely after me, as well as a most self-sacrificing friend and consolation. He would have been my cleverest student and companion, and a most trustworthy protector and owner of the Risale-i Nur.54

Nursi admits that that while he tried to endure the loss of Abdurrahman outwardly, inside him a fierce storm was raging. If from time to time solace proceeding from the Quran’s light had not consoled me, I would not have been able to endure it. At the time I used to wander alone in the mountains and valleys of Barla. Sitting in lonely places amid my sorrows, pictures of the happy life I had spent in former times with my loyal students like Abdurrahman passed through my imagination like images on a cinema screen. Suddenly the sacred meaning of the verse Everything shall perish save His countenance; His is the command, and to Him shall you return55 was made clear to me. It caused me to declare: “O Eternal One, You alone are Eternal! O Eternal One, You alone are Eternal!”, and truly consoled me. Moreover, the verse But if they turn away, say: “God suffices me, there is no god but He; in Him do I place my trust—He the Sustainer of the Throne [of Glory] Supreme!”56 came to my aid with its inextinguishable light to ease my grief at Abdurrahman’s death. It came to my assistance with its allusive meaning, which is that since Almighty God exists, He takes the place of everything.57

Here, Nursi throws light on one of the most intractable dilemmas of the human condition: man, a finite and mortal being, is by default a lover of the infinite and the immortal. The infinite and the immortal – the Source of all being – is not to be had in this world, although It is certainly to be glimpsed, for It manifests itself in beings which, like man himself, are

486

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology characterised by their finitude and impermanence. Finite, mortal objects of affection are mirrors in which aspects of the Beloved can be seen. The key to happiness, Nursi suggests, lies in falling in love not with the mirror but with the One Who is reflected in it, Who is eternal and therefore sufficient. While the breaking of a mirror – i.e. the passing of human loved ones – is distressing, it detracts not one iota from the Source of what was reflected in that mirror. As Nursi puts it, “Since He is Eternal, He is surely sufficient: a single manifestation of His grace takes the place of the whole world.” Acknowledgement that it is only the eternal source of manifestation that is worthy of being loved allows the bereaved to let go of the broken mirror and fasten his or her hopes on what was reflected in that mirror, and what continues to be reflected in all other mirrors in creation. The key, as Nursi discovered, is to internalise properly the eternality of the Source. The first time I uttered “O Eternal One, You alone are Eternal!”, it began to cure me like a surgical operation on the endless spiritual wounds arising from the passing of the world and of the friends in this world to whom I was attached, and from the ties binding me being broken. The second time, the phrase “O Eternal One, You alone are Eternal!” was both a salve and an antidote for all those innumerable wounds. That is to say: “You are eternal. If the rest depart, let them: You are enough for me. Since You abide forever, a single manifestation of Your mercy is sufficient in place of all transient things. Since You exist, everything exists for the person who knows of the connection with Your existence and acts in accordance with that relation. Transience and decline, death and non-existence are a veil, a renewal; like travelling through different domains.” Thinking this, my painful, sad, grievous, dark, awesome, separation-stained state of mind was transformed into a happy, joyful, pleasurable, luminous, lovable, familiar state. My tongue and heart, indeed all the particles of my being through the tongue of disposition, exclaimed: “All praise be to God!”58

Grief over the loss of loved ones, which is nothing more than an expression of human yearning for immortality, is assuaged, Nursi says, by the truths to be found in the Quran. “There are remedies in that sacred pharmacy enough to heal all of your difficulties,” he writes. “If you have recourse to it through belief and make use of those remedies through worship, the heavy burdens of your old age and your sorrows will be alleviated considerably.”59

The sufficiency of God

In his grief at the passing of Abdurrahman, Nursi grasped the fundamental problem of human existence, namely that man has a yearning for the immortal which the mortal can never satisfy. In his meditation on the verse For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs, he elaborates further on the nature of what is surely the thorniest of human dilemmas. I saw that governing in me were an overpowering desire for immortality, an intense love of existence, a great yearning for life, together with an infinite impotence and endless want. But an awesome transience was extinguishing the immortality. Suffering this state of mind, I exclaimed like the poet: “Reality demands the passing of my body, though my heart wants it to live forever; I suffer an affliction that not even Luqman the Wise can cure!” I was on

487

The Qur’an Revealed  the verge of despair when suddenly the verse For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs60 came to my assistance, summoning me to read it with attention. So I recited it, five hundred times every day. The more I recited it, the more levels of meaning were unfolded to me out of its many lights, at the level of ‘certainty at the degree of knowledge,’ (‘ilm al-yaqῑn) and even of ‘certainty at the degree of witnessing’ (‘ayn al-yaqῑn).61

That Nursi admits to having being gripped by an “overpowering desire for immortality” should come as no surprise, given what has been said already about the desire for everlasting life being part of the warp and weft of human existence. If man is a mirror held up to the Names of God, is it surprising that he should not be enamoured of the attributes of perfection? The problem arises, however, when he ascribes those attributes of perfection to the mirror rather than to the One whose reflection is to be found therein. Nursi states that his innate desire for immortality was in fact directed not at his own immortality but at the “existence, perfection and immortality of the Absolutely Perfect One”. However, through what he describes as “heedlessness”, that innate love had oriented itself towards the mirror and had attached itself to the reflection rather than to the One reflected. But then the verse For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs raised the veil. I saw and felt and experienced at the degree of ‘absolute certainty’ that the pleasure and happiness of my immortality lay exactly and in more perfect form in the immortality of the Enduring One of Perfection and in affirming my Sustainer and God, and in believing in Him, and submitting to Him.62

The desire for immortality, then, is an essential characteristic of mankind, and one which can be fulfilled only through the realisation that the everlasting cannot be gained from the evanescent. To seek the infinite from the finite or the absolute from the limited is doomed to failure; as Nursi points out, it is only the realisation that ‘God suffices’ which can erase the pain caused by loving the mirror rather than the One reflected in it. When I looked with the eye of belief, I saw that my miniscule being was the mirror of a limitless being, and through infinite expansion, the means of gaining innumerable existences, and was a word of wisdom producing the fruits of numerous permanent existences far more valuable than itself. I knew with ‘certainty at the degree of knowledge’ that to live for an instant in this respect was as valuable as an eternal existence. For I understood through the consciousness of belief that this being of mine was the work of art and the manifestation of the Necessarily Existent One. So being saved from the anxiety of loneliness and from innumerable separations and their pains, I formed relations and bonds of brotherhood with beings to the number of divine acts and names connected with beings – living beings especially - and I knew that there was a permanent union with all the beings I loved, and only a temporary separation. And so, through belief and the relations of belief, like all beings, my being gained the lights of innumerable existences untouched by separation. Even if it departed, they would remain behind and it would be happy as though it had remained itself.63

What Nursi had come to realise was that death does not equal separation, and that while the mirror may break, that which is reflected in it will endure. Furthermore, the mirror itself does not go to nothing: it merely changes its abode and moves on to reflect

488

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology the Names eternally. Nursi admits that he too was once distressed beyond belief when considering the phenomena of transience and decline – phenomena he equated with destruction, death and non-existence.64 It was only through the verse For us, God suffices that he was able to find consolation. He describes how he meditated upon the verse in the context of the Quranic assertion that God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth,65 and how his meditation yielded a number of subtle insights into the notion of creation as a vast conglomeration of looking glasses, each held up to the Divine, but each one fleeting and in constant flux. Mirrors, pieces of glass, transparent things and even bubbles, show the various hidden beauties of the sun’s light and of the seven colours in its light; and through their disappearance and renewal, and different capacities and refractions, they renew that beauty; and with their reflections, they display the hidden beauties and loveliness of the sun and its light. In exactly the same way, in order to act as mirrors to the sacred  beauty of the All-Beauteous One of Glory, the Pre-Eternal and Post-Eternal Sun, and to the everlasting loveliness of His most beautiful names, and to renew their manifestations, these beautiful creatures, these lovely artefacts, these exquisite beings, arrive and depart without stopping. Powerful proofs are expounded in detail in the Risale-i Nur that demonstrate that the beauties apparent on them belong not to them, but are signs, indications, flashes and manifestations of a transcendent, sacred beauty which wants to become manifest.66

The beauty that one falls in love with when one looks at one of these mirrors cannot, as Nursi says, belong to the mirror itself, just as the sun’s light which one sees in a drop of rain or a shard of glass cannot belong to anything apart from the sun itself. Man may desire immortality, and, indeed, there is immortality to be had. But it cannot be had in this transient, ephemeral world. In his meditation on the verse For us, God suffices, Nursi is encouraging his readers – and, in particular, those who are nearing death or who are in grief over the deaths of others – to focus not on the mirror, nor even on the reflection in it, but, rather, on the One Who is reflected, and Whose manifestations never cease, however many mirrors are broken.

On Patience in Adversity

The centrality of patience (s. abr) to spiritual well-being is emphasised on numerous occasions in the Risale-i Nur; in the Second Word, which deals in part with the tribulations of the prophet Job (Ayyūb), Nursi throws a little more light on the nature and importance of human forbearance in the face of adversity. Having been visited by all manner of trials and tribulations, including the loss of wealth and offspring, Job becomes afflicted with a series of severe physical illnesses, all of which he bears with incredible fortitude. It is only when his ailments become such that they begin to threaten his ability to commune with God that he is moved to invoke God’s mercy. O my Sustainer! Indeed harm has afflicted me, and You are the Most Merciful of the Merciful.67

Job made this supplication, Nursi says, not for his own comfort, but because he feared that his worship of God would suffer if his illness impaired his faculties any further.

489

The Qur’an Revealed  “O Lord! Harm has afflicted me; my remembrance of You with my tongue and my worship of You with my heart will suffer.” God Almighty then accepted this pure sincere, disinterested and devout supplication in the most miraculous fashion. He granted to Job perfect good health and made manifest in him all kinds of compassion.68

Nursi considers Job’s invocation to be among the most effective on account of its sincerity, and sees in the prophet’s story a number of important points which believers should bear in mind whenever they are visited with afflictions of any kind. Corresponding to the outer wounds and sicknesses of Job (PBWH), we have inner sicknesses of the spirit and heart. Were our inner being to be turned outward and our outer being inward, we would appear more wounded and diseased than Job. For each sin that we commit and each doubt that enters our mind inflicts wounds on our heart and our spirit. The wounds of Job (PBWH) were of such a nature as to threaten his brief worldly life, but our inner wounds threaten our infinitely long everlasting life. We need the supplication of Job thousands of times more than he did himself. Just as the worms that arose from his wounds penetrated to his heart and tongue, so too the wounds that sin inflicts upon us and the temptations and doubts that arise from those wounds will penetrate our inner heart, the seat of belief, and thus wound belief. Penetrating too the spiritual joy of the tongue, the interpreter of belief, they cause it to shun in revulsion the remembrance of God, and reduce it to silence.69

Job’s physical ailments, then, are read by Nursi as symbolising the spiritual ailments which beleaguer the believer when he becomes negligent and commits acts which are devoid of righteousness. Each breach of Divine law leaves upon the heart what the Quran calls rijs: a ‘dark spot’ or ‘trace of grime’.70 For Nursi, the worms that are said to have found their way into Job’s flesh, into his heart and his tongue, may indeed have wrought untold physical havoc; however, this is as nothing when compared to the damage which sin inflicts on man’s spiritual organs. For sin, penetrating to the heart, will blacken and darken it until it extinguishes the light of belief. Within each sin is a path leading to unbelief. Unless that sin is swiftly obliterated by seeking God’s pardon, it will grow from a worm into a snake that gnaws on the heart. For example, a man who secretly commits a shameful sin will fear the disgrace that results if others become aware of it. Thus the existence of angels and spirit beings will be hard for him to endure, and he will long to deny it, even on the strength of the slightest indication. Similarly, one who commits a major sin deserving of the torment of Hell will desire the non-existence of Hell wholeheartedly, and whenever he hears of the threat of Hellfire, he will dare to deny it on the strength of a slight indication and doubt, unless he takes up in protection the shield of repentance and seeking forgiveness. Similarly, one who does not perform the obligatory prayer and fulfil his duty of worship will be affected by distress, just as he would be in case of the neglect of a minor duty toward some petty ruler. Thus, his laziness in fulfilling his obligation, despite the repeated commands of the Sovereign of Pre-Eternity, will distress him greatly, and on

490

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology account of that distress will desire and say to himself: “Would that there were no such duty of worship!” In turn, there will arise from this desire a desire to deny God and bear enmity toward Him. If some doubt concerning the existence of the Divine Being comes to his heart, he will be inclined to embrace it like a conclusive proof. A wide gate to destruction will be opened in front of him. The wretch does not know that although he is delivered by denial from the slight trouble of duty of worship, he has made himself, by that same denial, the target for millions of troubles that are far more awesome. Fleeing from the bite of a gnat, he welcomes the bite of the snake. There are many other examples which may be understood with reference to these three so that the sense of Nay but their hearts are stained will become apparent.71

The second point Nursi makes concerning forbearance highlights the role of Divine Decree and Determining in all human affairs. Human beings ultimately have no right to complain, he says, when afflicted by disasters and illnesses, for if they occur, they occur in accordance with the principle of qadar. Firstly, God has made the garment of the body with which He has clothed man a manifestation of His art. He has made man to be a model on which He cuts, trims, alters and changes the garment of the body, thus displaying the manifestation of various of His Names. Just as the Name of Healer makes it necessary that illness should exist, so too the Name of Provider requires that hunger should exist. The Lord of All Dominion has disposal over His dominion as He wishes. Secondly, it is by means of disasters and sicknesses that life is refined, perfected, strengthened and advanced; that it yields results, attains perfection and fulfils its own purpose. Life led monotonously on the couch of ease and comfort resembles not so much the pure good that is being as the pure evil that is non-being; it tends in fact in that direction. Thirdly, the worldly realm is an arena of testing, an abode of service: it is not a place of pleasure, reward and requital. Given this, so long as they do not affect belief and are patiently endured, sicknesses and misfortunes conform fully to service and worship, and even strengthen it. Since they make each hour’s worship equivalent to that of a day, one should offer thanks instead of complaining.72

In short, illness and disaster cannot be the grounds for complaint because they do not happen unless they are decreed to happen; and if they happen, they happen for a purpose. The key to true well-being, Nursi implies, is that man should recognise this. For illness is as necessary for man’s progress as is ill-health: without the former, the latter would be unrecognisable. Furthermore, it affords him the all-important opportunity to progress spiritually. Illness and calamity remind man of his innate weakness and helplessness, which should lead him to take refuge in God by meditating upon His perfections. If he endures his tribulations patiently, Nursi asserts, and thinks of the rewards that his forbearance will yield, then: …each hour that he passes will count as a whole day spent in worship. His brief life becomes very long. There are even cases where a single minute is counted as equal to a whole day’s worship. If he thinks of the reward that results from misfortune and the requital that awaits him in the Hereafter, if he realizes that his brief life will count as a long life because of misfortune - then instead of being merely patient he should be thankful. He should say, “Praise be to God for every state other than unbelief and misguidance.” It is commonly said that misfortune is long-lasting. Indeed it is, but not because it is

491

The Qur’an Revealed  troublesome and distressing as people customarily imagine, but rather because it yields vital results just like a long life.73

But what of patience that appears to be inadequate, and which runs out, leaving man not only ill but also in emotional distress? Nursi’s answer is simple: the power of patient endurance that God gives to man is enough to help him cope with the problem at hand so long as he does not squander it on “baseless fears”: For through the predominance of delusion, man’s neglect and his imagining this transient life to be eternal, he squanders his power of endurance on the past and the future. His endurance is not equal to the misfortunes of the present, and he begins to complain. It is as if - God forbid! - he were complaining of God Almighty to men. In a most unjustified and even lunatic fashion, he complains and demonstrates his lack of patience. If the day that is past held misfortune, the distress is now gone, and only tranquillity remains; the pain has vanished and the pleasure in its cessation remains; the trouble is gone, and the reward remains. Hence one should not complain but give thanks for enjoyment. One should not resent misfortune, but love it. The transient life of the past comes to be counted as an eternal and blessed life because of misfortune. To think upon past pain with one’s fancy and then to waste part of one’s patience is lunacy.74

To waste one’s emotional resources by grieving over a misfortune that has now passed is, Nursi claims, the height of lunacy; indeed, given that without misfortune and illness one would be unable to appreciate tranquillity and well-being, one should give thanks for past tribulations rather than squander one’s mental energy by fretting over and regretting them. As far as days yet to come are concerned, since they have not yet come, to think now of the illness or misfortune to be borne during them and display impatience is also foolishness. To say to oneself “Tomorrow or the day after I will be hungry and thirsty” and constantly to drink water and eat bread today is pure madness. Similarly, to think of misfortunes and sicknesses yet in the future but now non-existent, to suffer them already, to show impatience and to oppress oneself without any compulsion, is such stupidity that it no longer deserves pity and compassion. In short, just as gratitude increases Divine bounty, so too complaint increases misfortune, and removes all occasion for compassion.75

Nursi’s third point is arguably his most salient: real misfortune is not that which harms one’s physical being but one’s spiritual well-being. True and harmful misfortune is that which affects religion. One should at all times seek refuge at the Divine Court from misfortune in matters of religion and cry out for help. But misfortunes that do not affect religion in reality are not misfortunes. Some of them are warnings from the Most Merciful One. If a shepherd throws a stone at his sheep when they trespass on another’s pasture, they understand that the stone is intended as a warning to save them from a perilous action; full of gratitude they turn back. So too there are many apparent misfortunes that are Divine warnings and admonishments, others that constitute the penance of sin, and others again that dissolve man’s state of neglect, remind him of his human helplessness and weakness, thus affording him a form of tranquillity. As for the variety of misfortune that is illness, it is not at all a misfortune, as has already been

492

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology said, but rather a favour from God and a means of purification. There is a tradition which says: “Just as a tree drops its ripe fruit when shaken, so too do sins fall away through the shaking of fever.”76

Most of the things that people class as misfortunes are, then, when viewed through the prism of belief, actually nothing of the sort. Understood within the overall framework of Divine trial, afflictions are to be interpreted either as warnings which are given in order to save the afflicted from even greater dangers or as Divine ‘wake-up calls’ which are designed to rouse man from the sleep of negligence and remind him not only of his duty but also of his innate existential poverty as a creature totally dependent on Divine munificence for all that he is and all that he has. And as is corroborated by Prophetic Tradition, many are the apparent misfortunes which are actually given in order – if the misfortune is born with patience – to erase past sins. Job, therefore, pleaded with God to relieve him not because he feared for his physical well-being but because he feared that his worshipfulness might suffer. Job did not pray in his supplication for the comfort of his soul, but rather sought cure for the purpose of worship, when disease was preventing his remembrances of God with his tongue and his meditation upon God in his heart. We too should make our primary intent, when making that supplication, the healing of the inward and spiritual wounds that arise from sinning. As far as physical diseases are concerned, we may seek refuge from them when they hinder our worship. But we should seek refuge in a humble and supplicating fashion; we should not protest. If we accept God as our Lord and Sustainer, then we must also accept all that He gives us in His capacity of Sustainer. To sigh and complain in a manner implying objection to Divine Determining and Decree is a kind of criticism of Divine Determining, an accusation levelled against God’s compassion. The one who criticizes Divine Determining strikes his head against the anvil and breaks it. Whoever accuses God’s mercy will inevitably be deprived of it. To use a broken hand to exact revenge will only cause further damage to the hand. So too a man who, afflicted with misfortune, responds to it with protesting complaint and anxiety, is only compounding his misfortune.77

It is, then, an issue of interpretation. Misfortune is only misfortune in reality when it strikes at the heart of man’s spiritual being: all other afflictions are given to man either as admonishments or as the means for the expiation of sin. Man would do well to recognise this, Nursi avers, because if physical misfortunes are seen as real misfortunes, and are worried about or fretted over, they tend to increase in apparent severity and import until they become all-encompassing psychologically, with potentially disastrous results. Physical misfortunes grow when they are seen to be large and shrink when they are seen to be small. For example, a dream enters one’s vision at night. If one pays it attention it swells up and grows; if one does not, it disappears. So too if one attempts to ward off an attacking swarm of bees, they will become more aggressive; whereas if one pays them no attention they will disperse. Thus if one regards physical misfortunes as great and grants them importance, they will grow, and because of anxiety pass from the body and

493

The Qur’an Revealed  strike root in the heart. The result will then be an inward affliction on which the outward misfortune fastens to perpetuate itself.78

To prevent a physical ailment from becoming a very real psychological threat, anxiety has to be fought. And the only way to fight anxiety, Nursi says, is to adopt an attitude of resignation; then, once one relies on God and becomes content with the dictates of Divine determining, the physical misfortune will “gradually decrease, dry up and vanish, just like a tree whose roots have been severed.” What Nursi appears to be saying here is something which modern physicians readily admit: stress and anxiety always tend to amplify one’s perception of physical illness and, in many cases, actually make that illness worse. But the point Nursi is making here is not that if one banishes anxiety, one banishes illness. One may banish the psychological distress that health anxiety inevitably provokes, but that does not mean that the underlying ailment will disappear: physical ‘misfortune’ will stay as long as its Creator dictates, Nursi seems to be saying, and in what he calls this “age of neglect”, that can only be a good thing. For in certain ages and for certain persons, misfortune is not in reality misfortune, but rather a Divine favour. Since I consider those afflicted with illness in the present age to be fortunate - on condition that their illness does not affect their religion - it does not occur to me to oppose illness and misfortune, nor to take pity on the afflicted. Whenever I encounter some afflicted youth, I find that he is more concerned with his religious duties and the Hereafter than are his peers. From this I deduce that illness does not constitute a misfortune for such people, but rather a bounty from God. It is true that illness causes him distress in his brief, transient and worldly life, but it is beneficial for his eternal life. It is to be regarded as a kind of worship. If he were healthy he would be unable to maintain the state he enjoyed while sick and would fall into dissipation, as a result of the impetuousness of youth and the dissipated nature of the age.79

Nursi concludes his discourse on the tribulations of Job, and the lessons that others may take from them, by reiterating that the absolute power and unlimited mercy of God can be made manifest only through their opposites; it is for this reason, he says, that existential impotence and unlimited need are part of the very fibre of man’s being. Man is a limited, finite creature with unlimited, infinite desires, and in order that God may display ‘the endless embroideries of His Names’, Nursi says that man is created with the capability of receiving unlimited varieties of pain as well as infinite varieties of pleasure. For all of the Divine Names manifested in the macroanthropos that is the world are also made manifest in the microcosm that is man. Beneficial matters like good health, well-being and pleasures cause man to offer thanks and prompt the human machine to perform its functions in many respects, and thus man becomes like a factory producing thanks. Similarly, by means of misfortune, illness and pain, and other motion-inducing contingencies, the other cogs of the human machine are set in motion and revolution. The mine of weakness, impotence and poverty inherent in human nature is made to work. It induces in man a state whereby he seeks refuge and help not only with a single tongue, but with the tongue of each of his members.80

494

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology It is through adversity, then, that man becomes most aware of his inherent weakness. And it is only through recognition of his inherent weakness that he is able to acknowledge the fact that power, like all other attributes of perfection, comes from a Source other than him. It is, Nursi says, only through this admixture of pleasure and pain, of well-being and illness, and of good fortune and adversity that man is able to “put forth a declaration of the Divine Names and become an ode to the glory of God, thus fulfilling the duties of his nature.” As a being who has the potential to become the vicegerent of God on earth through the conscious manifestation of all of the Divine Names, man is fated to taste the bitter in order to be able to recognise the sweet. Adversity, then, characterised in extremis in the case of Job, is one of the ineluctable features of human life, and, as such, should be embraced with understanding, forbearance and hope.

Advice to those in Prison

Just as Nursi was able to identify with the elderly on account of the tribulations of his own old age, he was able to empathise with prisoners thanks to his own bitter experiences of incarceration. To say that Nursi was no stranger to the wrath of the authorities and the indignity of the prison cell is an understatement: from his early thirties onwards, and particularly after the establishment of the Turkish republic in 1923, Nursi’s uncompromising defence of his religious beliefs in the face of encroaching laicism landed him on the wrong side of the law on numerous occasions. The unbending resolve that he showed in the face of the secular materialist forces ranged against him resulted, inter alia, in his being committed to a lunatic asylum; in several periods of exile; in long spells – often years – of house arrest and police surveillance; in a number of arrests and trials, all on trumped up charges; and in three lengthy prison sentences, served in Eskișehir, Denizli and Afyon. Nursi’s advice to those in prison thus comes across, as does much of his practical wisdom, as advice that is not only cast in the crucible of numerous instances of personal suffering but that is also directed primarily at his own soul. He begins by saying that all those who are in prison are in need of the “true consolation” that is to be found in the Risale-i Nur – sections of which were, in fact, written by Nursi while he was behind bars, often in the most tortuous and inhumane of conditions. Those whose need is arguably the greatest, he says, are the ones who find themselves incarcerated during their formative years, and who “are passing their sweet, young lives in prison.” For they, he claims, “need the Risale-i Nur as much as they need bread.”81 Indeed, were the young to take heed of the truths enshrined in the Risale, he says, they might be able to avoid the pitfalls of youth, one of which is the tendency to leap without looking. Indeed, youth heeds the emotions rather than reason, and emotions and desires are blind; they do not consider the consequences. They prefer one ounce of immediate pleasure to tons of future pleasure. They kill for a single minute’s pleasure of revenge, then suffer for eighty thousand hours the pain of prison. And one hour’s dissolute pleasure in questions of honour may result in life’s enjoyment being utterly destroyed due to distress at the fear of both prison and enemies. There are many other examples, many pitfalls for the unfortunate young because of which they transform their sweet lives into the most bitter and pitiable lives.

495

The Qur’an Revealed  It is therefore most necessary in this century for all Muslim youths to act heroically, and to defend themselves against attack with keen swords like the Fruits of Belief and the Guide For Youth from the Risale-i Nur. Otherwise those unfortunate youths will destroy utterly both their futures in this world, and their agreeable lives, and their happiness in the hereafter, and their eternal lives, and transform them into torment and suffering. And through their abuses and dissoluteness, they will end up in hospitals, and through their excesses in life, in prisons. In their old age, they will weep copiously with a thousand regrets. If, on the other hand, they protect themselves with Quranic training and with the truths of the Risale-i Nur, they will become truly heroic youths, perfect human beings, successful Muslims, and in some ways rulers over animate beings and the rest of the animal kingdom.82

The best protection against the temptations of youth, against the slide into juvenile delinquency and the spiritual destruction that it may wreak, Nursi writes, is the weapon provided by an understanding of the truths of belief to be found in the Risale-i Nur. Should the young fall foul of temptation and find themselves locked up on account of their mistakes, he says, the only way to salvage their youth and make good the mistakes of their short past is through worship and repentance. When a youth in prison spends one hour out of the twenty-four each day on the five obligatory prayers, and repents for the mistakes that were the cause of his disaster, and abstains from other harmful, painful sins, this will be of great benefit for both his life and his future, his country, and his nation, and his relatives, and he will also gain with his fleeting youth of ten to fifteen years an eternal, brilliant youth. Foremost the Quran of Miraculous Exposition, and all the revealed scriptures, have given this certain good news. If such a youth demonstrates through moderation and obedience his gratitude for the pleasing, delightful bounty of youth, it will both increase it and make it eternal, and make it a pleasure. Otherwise it will be both calamitous, and become painful, grievous, and a nightmare, and then it will depart. It will cause him to become like a vagrant, harmful for his relatives, his country and his nation.83

In accordance with the Prophetic Tradition which holds that an hour’s con­templation is worth seventy years – a whole lifetime – of ritual worship, Nursi reassures the young prisoner that if he dedicates no more than an hour of his day to obligatory prayer and makes amends for his misdemeanours, those years of his youth that are spent behind bars will be translated into a youth that is eternal in the life to come. Prison, then, does not have to be seen only as a means of punishment: if approached from the perspective of belief, it can also be a means of salvation. Indeed, in his counsels to those in prison, one gets the impression that Nursi is trying to emphasise more than anything else the cathartic aspect of incarceration: the imposition of limits on the unregenerate carnal soul (nafs al-ammāra) and the opportunity for metanoia, or the complete regeneration of the self. Nowhere is this more evident than in his approach to the issue of unjust imprisonment. It may be argued, of course, that when punishment is unjust, the only kind of catharsis obtaining is one which gives rise to feelings of bitterness and resentment, thus providing scant opportunity for any kind of meaningful spiritual growth. For Nursi, however, whether incarceration is in reality just or unjust makes absolutely no difference whatsoever: to be

496

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology imprisoned for a real crime that one has committed or to be cast into gaol on trumped up charges does not alter the fact that from the perspective of Divine determining, imprisonment is, for better or worse, one’s lot, and must be borne with forbearance and understanding. Nursi was no stranger to being imprisoned unjustly and so his reiteration of the role played by Divine determining in such matters should come as no surprise. But it needs to be stressed here that by invoking the issue of qadar, Nursi is attempting to sweeten the pill rather than to state simply that the medication must be taken without question or complaint. The Nursian stance is that if one finds oneself in prison, be it justly or unjustly, one must endeavour to see the wisdom behind it and, in some way, take a lesson from it. If the prisoner has been sentenced unjustly, on condition he performs the obligatory prayers, each hour will be the equivalent of a day’s worship, and the prison will be like a recluse’s cell. He will be counted among the pious hermits of olden times who retired to caves in order to devote themselves to worship. If he is poor, aged and ill, and desirous of the truths of belief, on condition he performs the obligatory prayers and repents, each hour will become the equivalent of twenty hours’ worship, and prison will become like a rest-house for him, and because of his friends there who regard him with affection, a place of love, training and education. He will probably be happier staying in prison than being free, for outside he is confused and subject to the assaults of sins from all sides. He may receive a complete education from prison. On being released, it will not be as a murderer, or thirsting for revenge, but as someone penitent, proven by trial, well-behaved and beneficial for his nation. In fact, the Denizli prisoners became so extraordinarily well-behaved after studying the Risale-i Nur for only a short time that some of those concerned said: “Studying the Risale-i Nur for fifteen weeks is more effective at reforming them than putting them in prison for fifteen years.”84

Nursi was arrested, exiled and imprisoned unjustly on numerous occasions, and refers to the injustice of his persecutors quite openly. At the same time, however, he acknowledges that from the perspective of Divine determining (qadar), incarceration was destined to be his lot by Divine fiat, and that since it was clearly God’s will that he be imprisoned, he must turn what was on the surface a calamity into an opportunity for learning and spiritual growth. Nursi called prison the ‘Josephite school’ (madrasa-i Yusūfiyya) in remembrance of the prophet Joseph, who, falling foul of the false accusations of Potiphar’s wife, spent many years in the Pharaoh’s dungeons. Tradition has it that Joseph, whose truthfulness and compassion were legion, became such a captivating role model for his fellow prisoners that many were guided towards monotheism, while the once hellish conditions of their imprisonment were transformed by his presence and the influence of his teachings into an experience that was seen not only as bearable but also as positively beneficial. Anecdotal evidence from his gaolers and fellow prisoners attests to the fact that Nursi followed in the footsteps of Joseph, acquainting his fellow prisoners with the teachings of the Risale-i Nur and, by all accounts, winning the affection and loyalty of even the most hardened of criminals, not to mention the wardens.85 His focus was, as ever, on the salvific nature of true belief, and the importance of attaining self-knowledge and God-awareness while one was still able. Prison, he believed, provided the perfect opportunity. Since death does not die, and the appointed hour is unknown, it may come at any time; and since the grave cannot be closed, and troop after troop enter it and are lost; and since

497

The Qur’an Revealed  it has been shown through the truths of the Quran that for those who believe, death is transformed into the discharge papers releasing them from eternal annihilation, while for the corrupt and the dissolute it is disappearing for ever into eternal annihilation, and is unending separation from their loved ones and all beings, most certainly and with no doubt at all, the most fortunate person is he who with patience and thanks fully benefits from his time in prison and, studying the Risale-i Nur, works to serve the Quran and his belief on the straight path. To those who are addicted to enjoyment and pleasure, I would say this: I am seventyfive years old, and I know with utter certainty from thousands of experiences, proofs and events that true enjoyment, pain-free pleasure, grief-free joy and life’s happiness are to be found only in belief and in the sphere of the truths of belief. While a single worldly pleasure yields numerous pains; as though dealing ten slaps for a single grape, it drives away all life’s pleasure. O you unfortunate people who are experiencing the misfortune of prison! Since your world is weeping and your life is bitter, strive so that your hereafter will not also weep, and your eternal life will smile and be sweet! Benefit from prison! For each day spent in prison may gain as much as ten days’ worship, and, with regards to their fruits, may transform those transient hours into enduring hours, and through five or ten years’ punishment may be the means of saving a person from millions of years of eternal imprisonment. For the believers, the condition for gaining this most significant and valuable advantage is to perform the obligatory prayers, repent for the sins that were the cause of their imprisonment, and offer thanks in patience. For sure, prison is an obstacle to many sins; it does not provide the opportunity for them.86

To the imperative of worship and repentance Nursi adds the need for patience, a virtue which our author never tires of stressing. Moreover he advises his readers that the best way to strive for patience is to try to live only in the present. Just as the cessation of pleasure causes pain, so does the cessation of pain give pleasure. Yes, on thinking of enjoyable days that are now past, everyone feels a pang of regret and longing, and says: “Alas!”, and recalling calamitous, unhappy days of the past, experiences a sort of pleasure since they are passed, and says: “Praise and thanks be to God, that calamity has left its reward and departed.” He breathes a sigh of relief. That is to say, an hour’s temporary pain and sorrow leave behind a sort of pleasure in the spirit, while a pleasurable hour leaves a pain. Since the reality is thus; and since past calamitous hours together with their pains are no longer existent, and future distressing days are at the present time non-existent, and there is no pain from nothing, to continually eat bread and drink water today, for example, because of the possibility of being hungry and thirsty in several days’ time, is most foolish. In just the same way, to think now of the past and future unhappy hours, which simply do not exist, and to display impatience, and ignoring one’s faulty self, to moan as though complaining about God is also most foolish. So long as the power of patience is not scattered to left and right, that is, to the past and future, and is held firm in the face of the present of hour and day, it is sufficient. The distress is reduced from ten to one. Divine favour pointed out the above fact to me while, during a few days of material and spiritual affliction, illness and trial the like of which I had never before

498

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology experienced in my life, I was being crushed in particular by the despair and distress of the heart and spirit which resulted from my being unable to serve the Quran and belief with the Risale-i Nur. I was then content with my distressing illness and imprisonment. For, saying: “It is great profit for an unfortunate like myself who waits at the door of the grave to turn one hour which might be passed in heedlessness into ten hours’ worth of worship,” I gave thanks.87

Nursi ends his discourse with a discussion which, he says, will serve to save those in prison “from both worldly torment and the torment of the hereafter.” The discussion is ostensibly an elucidation of the dynamics of Divine determining (qadar), but at the heart of this theological excursus one discerns Nursi’s primary motive: the inculcation of feelings of brotherhood and forgiveness among those serving time behind bars. Let us suppose, for example, a person killed someone’s brother or one of his relatives. Now this murder, which yields one minute’s pleasure of revenge, causes millions of minutes of both distress for the heart and the anguish of prison. And the fear of revenge by the murdered man’s relatives, together with the anxiety of finding himself face to face with his enemy, drives away all his pleasure in life. He suffers the torment of both fear and anger. There is only one solution for this, and that is reconciliation, which the Quran commands and which truth, reality, humanity and Islam require and encourage.88

What is required in this situation, Nursi says, is that peace should reign. And peace can reign only if there is forgiveness and conciliation. What the family of the murder victim should realise, he says, is that since the appointed hour of death is set and cannot be changed, the murdered man would in any case have departed this earthly life. As for the murderer, he was the means of the Divine decree’s being carried out. This does not, of course, make him any less culpable, either in the eyes of the law or in the sight of God, but on one level, Nursi seems to be saying, it does put the whole issue into perspective. If the victim’s family are unable to forgive and if the murderer is unwilling to show remorse, reconciliation between the two sides is impossible and all involved are thus destined to suffer perpetually “the torments of fear and revenge”. It is because of this that Islam commands that “one believer should not be vexed with another believer for more than three days.” If the murder was not the result of a vindictive grudge and enmity, and a two-faced trouble-maker instigated the discord, it is essential to make peace quickly. Otherwise, that minor disaster becomes a large one, and continues. If they make peace, and the murderer repents and prays continuously for the man he killed, then both sides will gain much and become like brothers. In place of one departed brother, he will gain several religious brothers. He will be resigned to Divine Decree and Determining (qad.  ā wa qadar) and forgive his enemy. Especially since they heed the lessons of the Risale-i Nur, both individual and public peace and well-being, and the brotherhood that there is in the sphere of the Risale-i Nur, require that they put aside all the hard feelings that exist between them.89

Such situations, Nursi writes, existed during his imprisonment in Denizli, where all of those prisoners who were divided by bitter enmity eventually became brothers thanks to the teachings of the Risale-i Nur.

499

The Qur’an Revealed  Indeed, it was one reason for our acquittal, and caused even the irreligious and ungodly to say about those prisoners: “Mashallah! Barakallah!” And it was an utter relief for those prisoners. I myself have seen here a hundred men suffer inconvenience on account of one man and not go out to take exercise together. It is oppression towards them. A manly believer of sound conscience will not cause hundreds of other believers harm because of some insignificant and minor error or benefit. If he makes a mistake and does cause harm, he should repent immediately. Since the reality of the matter is this, of course you must be brothers to one another, like the Denizli prisoners and students of the Risale-i Nur. You can see that they examine all your possessions, food, bread, and soup which come from outside so that a knife does not get in among you and you do not attack one another. The warders who faithfully serve you suffer much trouble. Also, you do not go out to exercise together, as though you were going to attack one another like wild beasts. And so, new friends, who are by nature bold and courageous, with great moral courage you should say to the group at this time: “If not knives, but Mausers and revolvers were given us, and the order to fire as well, we would not hurt our friends who are unfortunate and suffering this calamity like ourselves. Through the guidance and at the command of the Quran, and belief, and Islamic brotherhood, and our interests, we have decided to forgive them and to try not to offend them, even if formerly there were a hundred reasons for our enmity and hostility.” And so transform this prison into an auspicious place of study.90

Finally, Nursi says that it his firm belief that the prisoners themselves played a not insignificant role in the Divine determining which brought Nursi and his teachings into the prisons of Eskișehir, Denizli and Afyon. I have formed the firm conclusion that, in respect of Divine favour, you are an important cause in our entering here. That is to say, with its consolation and the truths of belief, the Risale-i Nur is to save both you from the distress of this calamity of prison and from much worldly harm, and your life from passing profitlessly and in vain through grief and sorrow and being wasted on the winds of fancy, and your hereafter from weeping like your world is weeping now; it is to provide you with true solace.91

What Nursi seems to be saying is that one of the primary reasons behind his various spells of incarceration was that the Risale-i Nur should reach those whom it might not have reached had the authorities left him alone and not fabricated charges against him. Without the horrors of Eskișehir, Denizli and Afyon, the beauties of the madrasa-i Yusūfiyya might never have come into existence. This is a lesson, it would appear, that Nursi wished to teach both to himself and to those who had suffered in similar fashion.

On the Death of a Child

Nursi’s advice to his bereaved friend, Hafiz Halid Efendi, on the death of his child, combines words of consolation with tactful, compassionate reminders of the principle of Divine Determining (qadar) and the imperative of patience. My brother, your child’s death saddened me. But, “the command is God’s,” contentment with the Divine decree and submission to Divine Determining is a mark of Islam. May

500

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology Almighty God grant you all patience. And give good news to the patient, those who when afflicted with calamity say: To God do we belong and to Him is our return.92

By way of further consolation, Nursi explains a number of points which, he says, will be a salve for the grief of the bereaved. The meaning of the phrase, immortal youths 93 in the All-Wise Quran is this: with this phrase, the verse indicates and gives the good news that the children of believers who die before reaching maturity will remain perpetually as eternal, lovable children in a form worthy of Paradise. There they will be an everlasting means of happiness in the embrace of their fathers and mothers who go to Paradise, and the means for ensuring for their parents the sweetest of pleasures like loving and caressing their children.94

Nursi rejects the belief held by some that, since the hereafter is not the place for procreation, the notion of parents loving and caressing their children there is meaningless. On the contrary, Nursi says, the very point of being given just a taste of parenthood in this world, particularly in the case of fathers and mothers whose children die before puberty, is that they grasp the notion of an eternity of parental love. For gaining millions of years of pure, pain-free loving and caressing of eternal children in place of a short time like ten years of loving one’s children that is mixed with sorrows in this world is surely a great source of happiness for believers.95

The ultimate futility of grief over the loss of a child is also illustrated by Nursi through a short prison allegory: A prisoner was once allowed a visit by one of his beloved children. But this seemed to make matters worse, for he now grieved over not only his own sorrow, since he could not make the child comfortable, but over the hardship of the child as well. Then the compassionate judge sent him a message which said: “For sure this child is yours, but he is my subject and of my people. I shall take him and look after him in a fine palace.” The prisoner wept in anguish, crying: “This child is my solace; I will not give him up!” His fellow prisoners remonstrated with him: “Your grief is meaningless. If it is the child you pity, he will go to a spacious and happy palace in place of this dirty, stinking, distressing dungeon. If you are grieved for yourself and are seeking your own benefits, if your child remains here, you will suffer much distress and pain at the child’s difficulties, which will outweigh your single dubious, temporary benefit. If he goes there, it will be to your advantage, for it will be the cause of attracting the king’s mercy and will be an intercessor for you. The king will want to make you meet with him. He surely will not send him to the prison so that you can see him; he will release you from the prison, summon you to the palace, and allow you to meet with the child there. That is, of course, on condition that you have confidence in the king and you obey him....” 96

Believers, Nursi says, should try to understand that if their children die before they reach puberty, they die in innocence: released from the ‘prison’ of earthly existence, they step directly into the light of Divine grace. Rather than grieve, Nursi says, believers should be happy that their offspring did not stay longer in this world; after all, there is nothing that would have guaranteed their safe passage through it if they had. Furthermore, a child

501

The Qur’an Revealed  who dies before puberty is a means of intercession for its parents, provided, of course, that they do not fall into despair and ingratitude as a result of something decreed and inevitable. Nursi writes that believers should also try to understand that however attached they might be, all rights to the child actually lie with the child’s true Owner: The child who died was the creature, possession, servant and, together with all his members, the artefact of a Most Compassionate Creator; and belonging to Him, was a friend of his parents, put temporarily under their supervision. The Creator made the father and mother servants of the child. In return for their services, He gave them pleasurable compassion as an immediate wage. Now if, as the requirement of mercy and wisdom, that All-Compassionate Creator, Who owns nine hundred and ninety-nine shares out of a thousand of the child, takes the child from you and puts an end to your service, to cry out in grief and despair on account of that apparent single share in the face of the true owner of the thousand shares in a manner that recalls complaint, does not befit a believer; it befits rather the people of neglect and misguidance.97

A child is, then, merely ‘on loan’, in a sense, to its parents and, like all loans, must sooner or later be given back to its rightful owner. To have a precious stone entrusted to one’s safekeeping gives one certain duties towards that stone, and towards the one who entrusted it. However, it confers no rights of ownership, and to complain or grieve when the stone is taken back is not, Nursi says, how a believer would behave. A bereaved believer should also take comfort from the knowledge that, since death is universal, any separation will, by default, be a temporary one. If the world had been eternal, and man was to have remained in it eternally, and separation had been eternal, grievous sorrow and despairing woe would have had some meaning. But since this world is a guest-house, wherever the dead child has gone, you, and we too, shall go there. Moreover, this death is not particular to him, it is a general highway. And, since separation is not forever, in the future, both in the Intermediate Realm and in the hereafter, parents will meet their children again. One must say, therefore, that the command is God’s. He gave him and He took him away. One must say, “All praise be to God for every situation,” and offer thanks in patience.98

Finally, that which comes to the aid of a believer in his or her time of grief is the gift of compassion – what Nursi calls “one of the sweetest and most subtle manifestations of Divine mercy”. Nursi draws a distinction between passionate love and compassionate love: the former, he says, is “transformed into true love only with the greatest difficulty”, while the latter “swiftly becomes a means to union with Almighty God.” 99But what does this mean in the context of grief over loss in general, and grief over the loss of a beloved child in particular? The key is, as one might expect, belief, for it is only through the prism of belief that the distinction between passion and compassion, and the demerits of what Nursi calls “worldly love”, can be seen and understood. Both father and mother love their child more than all the world. When their child is taken from them, if they are fortunate and if they are true believers, its turns their faces from this world and finds the True Giver of Bounties. It says: “Since the world is transitory, it

502

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology is not worthy of the heart’s attachment.” Wherever the child has gone, a person forms an attachment with that place, and this gains for him high spiritual rank. The people of neglect and misguidance are deprived of the happiness and good news of these points we have mentioned. You can see from the following how grievous their situation is: they see their only child in the throes of death and due to their imagining the world to be eternal and as a result of their heedlessness and misguidance, they think death is non-existence and eternal separation. They think of him in the earth of his grave in place of his soft bed, and due to their heedlessness or misguidance, they do not think of the Paradise of mercy and heaven of bounty of the Most Compassionate of the Compassionate; you can see by comparison what despairing sorrow and grief they suffer. Whereas belief and Islam say to the believer: his All-Compassionate Creator will take this child of yours who is in the throes of death from this base world and take him to Paradise. He will make him both an intercessor for you, and an eternal child. Separation is temporary, do not worry. Say, the command is God’s.100 To God do we belong and to Him shall we return,101 and bear it patiently.102

The difference in the way people grieve depends to a large extent on the difference in the ways that people love. Nursi contrasts compassionate love, or the love that grows out of an understanding of Divine mercy, with passionate or worldly love (‘ishq), which has a different dynamic altogether. Compassionate love is that which, in Nursian parlance, looks at the object of love from the perspective of the ‘Other-indicative’ or ma‘nā-i h. arf ī : it sees the earthly beloved as a mirror which points to the true Beloved reflected in it. When the earthly beloved disappears, there is grief: even the most God-aware of individuals will grieve at the passing of a loved one, and to suggest that sadness over a bereavement is somehow beneath the dignity of a believer is to deny the existential impotence of humankind and the innate feelings of helplessness that, by dint of their being so very human, beleaguer even the hardiest of believing souls in times of loss and separation. However, the Tradition which says that open grieving should not last more than three days is one which, even if not taken absolutely literally, suggests that grief is not without its pitfalls. Indeed, if, as Nursi says, the believer trusts that separation is temporary, and that the child will be taken ‘from this base world’ and carried to Paradise, there is - in theory at least - no place for grief at all. To love with compassion is to see the beloved as a Divine mirror, and to realise that when the mirror disappears, it does not do so forever. More importantly, it is to realise that the names which were reflected in that mirror, and which are the true objects of affection, continue to be reflected in the countless other mirrors which fill the phenomenal world. It is for this reason that compassionate love for others is translatable with relative ease into love for God and the desire for unity with Him. Passionate love, however, regards the object of affection from the perspective of ma‘na-i ismī or the ‘self-referential’: it longs for the beloved not on account of what it points to, but rather for its own sake, in and of itself. Thus when the beloved disappears, or when love is unrequited, the loss felt by those who do not believe in the hereafter gives rise to unbearable feelings of emptiness and anxiety; grief may last for years, or may never leave completely. While there is in both passionate and compassionate love a fundamental attraction, one may argue that the basic difference is that in compassion there is a mutual attraction between the soul and its Source, a sympatheia, which seeks union but not possession.103 Passionate – or

503

The Qur’an Revealed  worldly – love may be intense but since it is tied to the ephemeral it is inevitably flawed. When bereavement strikes one whose love is focused solely on the ephemeral, and is thus ‘self-referential’, its stings are inevitably more painful than when death takes the beloved of one who loves for the sake of God. In consoling his friend on the loss of a small child, Nursi stresses both the temporary nature of the separation, thus giving hope to the bereaved, and the right way to love, which is the way of compassion. In so doing he offers not only a salve for the wounds inflicted by loss but also a stratagem for attitudinal change which will help the believer to see beyond the purely ephemeral and fasten his or her hopes to that which is everlasting, and thus which never fails.

On Frugality

In general, our author has little to say on socio-economic issues: his main focus in the Risale is on belief, and on the ramifications of denial of truth. However, in his short treatise on frugality, it is not difficult to discern the framework – albeit inchoate, and articulated naturally within Bediuzzaman’s traditional terms of reference, which are always oriented towards the perfection of belief – of what may quite easily be construed as a Nursian moral economy. Frugality has been described by some authors as an art de vivre : an ideal that implies the lowering of material consumption and the adoption of a simple lifestyle, with the objective being to make room in one’s life for higher values such as inner peace, social justice or, indeed, a heightened sense of spirituality and God-awareness. As such, frugality is a concept with far-reaching philosophical and religious roots, be it among the Stoics of ancient Greece or the saints and ascetics of the major faiths. While frugality in religious ethics is seen as a virtue which enhances spiritual enlightenment, in the ethics of the philosophers it is seen as a wholly rational means of engendering happiness.104 In the hands of thinkers such as Adam Smith and Max Weber, frugality is praised as a kind of ‘non-religious asceticism’ – one which served as the driving force behind early capitalism. However, by emphasising the instrumental nature of frugality as a tool for the increase of material well-being, thinkers outside the religious traditions deracinated frugality from its spiritual soil and linked it inextricably to savings and investment, both means for enhancing future financial and material welfare. The emphasis on thrift for the sake of future well-being leads, paradoxically, to the growth of consumerism and material avarice, which then become the key tools for increasing wealth, tolling the death knell for frugality as an inherently spiritual value.105 If understood and assimilated properly, the Nursian approach to frugality may well have far-reaching socio-economic implications on a macro level for those who embrace it, although it is clear, as with all his teachings, that he is addressing first and foremost the individual. For in Nursi’s view, it is with the individual – with the ‘human I’ of each particular soul – that any kind of change must begin. And any kind of change that takes a soul from wastefulness to frugality can be taught and encouraged only within the framework of worshipfulness and the imperative of God-awareness. Thus Nursi treats frugality as a wholly spiritual virtue – a means of enhancing personal growth towards God and attaining Divine

504

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology pleasure – rather than as an instrument for the increase of material well-being, although naturally the two are not mutually exclusive. Nursi takes as his starting point the Quranic verse Eat and drink, but waste not by excess.106 Describing the verse as one which “gives most important and wise instruction in the form of categorically commanding frugality and prohibiting wastefulness”, he elucidates the wisdom which underpins it in a number of succinctly expressed points.

Frugality as a form of thanks (shukr)

It is evident, Nursi writes, that God desires thanks in return for the bounties that He bestows on mankind, and since wastefulness is a form of ingratitude, it is clear that frugality is a form of appreciation. The All-Compassionate Creator desires thanks in return for the bounties He bestows on mankind, while wastefulness is contrary to thanks, and slights the bounty and causes loss. Frugality, however, shows respect for the bounty and is profitable. Yes, frugality is both a sort of thanks, and shows respect towards the Divine mercy manifested in the bounties, and most definitely is the cause of plenty. So too, like abstinence, it is health-giving for the body, and, since it saves a person from the degradation of what is in effect begging, is a cause of self-respect. It is also a powerful means of experiencing the pleasure to be found in bounties, and tasting that pleasure in bounties which apparently afford no pleasure. As for wastefulness, since it is opposed to these instances of wisdom, it has grave consequences.107

It should perhaps be reiterated here that when Nursi talks of God’s ‘desire’ for human appreciation, he is using a form of linguistic condescension which clearly is not to be taken literally. Thanks are needed not by God but by man himself, who without them will take everything for granted and resort to profligacy and wastefulness, which, Nursi assures us, have serious consequences. Frugality, which, he writes, is a form of thanks, represents one way of showing respect both for the bounties and their Source, and is also the means whereby bounties are multiplied.

Frugality and physical well-being

Frugality is also important for the equilibrium and well-being of the human body, which man has ‘on trust’, as it were, from its Creator; to abandon frugality in matters concerning food and the sense of taste is to abandon the body to disequilibrium and illness. The All-Wise Maker created the human body in the form of a wonderful palace or wellordered city. The sense of taste in the mouth is like a door-keeper, and the nerves and blood vessels like telephone and telegraph wires; they are the means by which the sense of taste communicates with the stomach, which is at the centre of the body, and informs it of the food that enters the mouth. If the body and stomach has no use for it, it says: “Forbidden!”, and expels it. And sometimes the food is harmful and bitter, as well as not being beneficial for the body, and it spits it out immediately. Thus, since the sense of taste is a doorkeeper, from the point of view of administering the stomach and body, it is a master and a ruler. If the gifts arriving at the palace or city

505

The Qur’an Revealed  and those given to the palace’s ruler are worth one hundred dollars, only five dollars’ worth is appropriate for the doorkeeper in the form of a tip, lest he becomes conceited and corrupted. For should he become so, he may abandon his duty and let revolutionaries into the palace who will give him a bigger tip. Bearing this in mind, let us imagine two mouthfuls of food. One is a portion of cheese or egg, perhaps – and costs forty cents; the other is a portion of the choicest baklava and cost ten times as much. Before entering the mouth, there is no difference in these two mouthfuls with respect to the body, they are equal. And after passing down the throat, they are still equal in nourishing the body. Indeed, forty cents’ worth of cheese sometimes is more nutritious. The only difference is the thirty seconds in which the taste buds are pampered by the baklava. You can see from this what a meaningless and harmful waste it is to increase the cost tenfold for the sake of half a minute’s pleasure. Indeed, to give the doorkeeper a tip which is far more than his due will certainly corrupt him. He will declare: “I am the ruler,” and will let in whosoever gives him the biggest tip and most pleasure; he will cause a revolution and conflagration to break out. Then he will compel them to cry out: “Oh! Call the doctor and make him put out this fire in my stomach and bring down my temperature!” 108

Frugality and contentment with one’s lot are, Nursi says, in complete conformity with Divine wisdom: in treating the sense of taste as a doorkeeper and giving it its precise due and no more, one is acting in accordance with that wisdom and ensuring the well-being of a body which has been given on loan. Wastefulness, however, is contrary to wisdom, and because it is so, it swiftly receives its punishment, upsetting the stomach and causing real appetite to be lost. Producing from the unnecessary variety of foods a false and artificial appetite, it causes indigestion and illness.109

Lest the reader think that Nursi’s strictures on the ‘doorkeeper’ tend to overlook the fact that delicious foods are not delicious for nothing, and that pleasure too has its purposes, he adds a caveat. The sense of taste must act like a dutiful doorkeeper “for the heedless and those who have not progressed spiritually nor advanced in the way of thanks,” he says.110 For those who have progressed further on the spiritual path, he says, the situation is slightly different. The sense of taste of those truly on the way of thanks, those seeking reality, and those who approach it with their hearts is like a supervisor and inspector in the kitchens of Divine mercy. Its duty is to recognize and weigh up the varieties of Divine bounties on the tiny scales present in it to the number of foods, and to send the body and stomach news of the food in the form of thanks. In this respect the sense of taste does not only look to the physical stomach; rather, since it looks also to the heart, spirit and mind, it has a position and importance superior to the stomach. 111

The difference, then, between those who are at the beginning of the spiritual path and those who have progressed some way along it is purely attitudinal. In Nursian parlance, the former look upon food from the perspective of the ‘self-referential’ (ma‘nā-i ismī), thinking only of the physical pleasure to be had from the ingestion of delicious food, while the latter regard it as being purely ‘Other-indicative’ (ma‘nā-i h. arf ī), pointing not

506

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology to itself but to the attributes of perfection that it represents. Consequently, those who appreciate the pleasure of food as an indicator not of the food itself but of its Provider are, with certain provisos, allowed to partake of delicious food purely in order to enhance their capacity for gratitude. On condition it is not wasteful or extravagant, and is purely to carry out its duty of thanks and recognize and perceive the varieties of Divine bounty, and on condition it is licit and does not lead to degradation and begging, it can follow its pleasure. In fact, delicious foods may be preferred in order to employ the tongue which bears the sense of taste in giving thanks. 112

Nursi illustrates his point with a story of a miracle attributed to the famous Sufi saint, ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī.113 Shaykh Jīlānī once had as a disciple a young man who was the only son of an aged and anxious woman. This esteemed lady had gone to her son’s cell and seen that he had nothing to eat but a piece of dry black bread. Her maternal compassion was aroused by his emaciated condition resulting from his asceticism. Feeling sorry for him, she went to Jīlānī in order to complain, only to see that the Shaykh was tucking into roast chicken. “O Master!” she cried. “My son is dying of hunger while you are eating chicken!” Whereupon Jīlānī said to the chicken: “With God’s permission, rise up!” At this, the cooked chicken bones assembled and were thrown out of the dish as a whole live chicken. Jīlānī said to her: “When your son reaches this level, then he too can eat chicken.” Thus the meaning of Jīlānī’s words is this: whenever one’s spirit rules his body, and his heart rules the desires of his soul, and his reason rules his stomach, and he wants pleasure for the sake of offering thanks, then he may partake of delicious things.114

Frugality and the provision of livelihood

Nursi advises his reader that, in accordance with the Prophetic Tradition “He who is frugal will not have family difficulties as regards livelihood”, there is much evidence that frugality makes supporting one’s family easier, and is even conducive to an increase in bounties. For instance, I have seen myself and I can say according to the testimony of those who have befriended and assisted me that through being frugal, I have sometimes seen a tenfold increase, and so have my friends. A number of the tribal leaders who were exiled to Burdur together with me did their best to make me accept their zakat so that I would not suffer privation and humiliation through lack of money. I said to them: “Although I have very little money, I am frugal and economical and I am accustomed to being content with little. I am thus in a sense richer than you.” I refused their repeated and insistent offers. It is worth noting that two years later, some of those who had offered me their zakat were in debt because they had not been frugal. Thanks be to God, seven years on from that, through the plenty resulting from frugality, that small amount of money was still sufficient for me: it did not degrade me, nor compel me to present my needs to the people, nor make me deviate from my way of self-sufficiency and being independent of people, which is one of the principles of my life.115

507

The Qur’an Revealed  The profligate, Nursi writes, are bound to be abased and reduced to poverty in the end. For at this time, money, the means of wastefulness and extravagance, is extremely expensive. Sometimes a person sells his honour and self-respect and bribes are taken to receive it. Sometimes the sacred things of religion are sold, all for the sake of a little inauspicious money received in return. That is to say, material goods worth ten cents are received in return for an immaterial loss of one hundred dollars. However, if a person is frugal and restricts and limits his needs to the essential, according to the implied meaning of the verse Indeed, it is God Who gives all sustenance, Lord of all power and strength,116 and the explicit meaning of the verse, And there is no moving creature on the earth but its sustenance is provided by God,117 he will find enough sustenance to live on in unexpected ways. Because the verse guarantees it. 118

There are, Nursi says, two sorts of sustenance. The first, alluded to in the verses above, is the essential sustenance needed in order for man to subsist: this, Nursi says, is the sustenance guaranteed by the Sustainer. So long as man’s inclination towards evil does not interfere, he will find this essential sustenance under any circumstances. He will not be compelled to sacrifice his religion, or his honour, or his self-respect.119

The second sort is described by Nursi as ‘metaphorical sustenance’, and basically refers to those ‘needs’ which are, in essence, nothing more than ‘wants’. For through abuse, inessential needs become like essential ones, and through the calamity of custom and tradition, people become addicted to them and cannot give them up. Since this sustenance is not guaranteed by the Sustainer, obtaining it is extremely expensive, particularly at this time. This inauspicious sustenance is obtained first of all through the sacrifice of self-respect and the acceptance of degradation, and sometimes stooping to what is in effect begging, kissing the feet of the vile, and sometimes sacrificing the sacred things of religion, which are the light of eternal life.120

To want what is not actually necessary when there are others who are in dire need of what is essential can also prove toxic to the conscience: For at this time of poverty and hardship, the distress those with consciences feel at the anguish of the hungry and needy sours any pleasure to be had from unlawfully acquired money. During strange times such as these, as far as doubtful goods are concerned, one has to make do with them to the minimum degree necessary. For according to the rule, “Necessity is determined according to its extent,” when compelled to, illicit goods may be taken to the minimum degree necessary, not more. Someone in dire need may eat dead meat, but he may not fill his stomach with it. He may only eat enough not to die. Also, more cannot be eaten with unspoilt pleasure in the presence of a hundred people who are hungry.121

Frugality and stinginess

Nursi expresses surprise that those who are profligate and dissolute should accuse the frugal of being tight-fisted, and recounts a story from his own experience to dispel any notion that frugality is the same as stinginess.

508

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology One of my students insisted on my accepting - contrary to my rule and the principle of my life - a present of nearly two and a half kilos of honey. However much I declined, he was not to be persuaded. Saying, with being economical let the three brothers with me eat the honey for thirty to forty days in the months of Sha’ban and Ramadan, and not be without something sweet to eat, and let the one who brought it earn the reward, I told them to take it. I myself had a kilo of honey as well. Although my three friends were moderate and appreciated frugality, through offering the honey to each other, and each flattering the others’ souls, and each preferring the others to himself, which in one respect is a good quality, they forgot about being economical. In three nights they finished the two and a half kilos of honey. Laughing, I said: “I would have given you the taste of that honey for thirty to forty days, and now you have reduced the thirty days to three. I hope you enjoyed it!” I for my part used my one kilo of honey frugally. I had enough to last me through the whole of Sha‘ban and Ramadan and there was also enough to give a spoonful to each of the brothers every evening while breaking their fast, thus becoming the means of significant reward. Perhaps those who saw this conduct of mine thought me stingy and the brothers generous. However, I saw that concealed beneath the apparent stinginess lay an elevated dignity, increase and plenty, and great reward. If they had not stopped, it would have resulted in something much baser than stinginess beneath the generosity and excess, such as beggarliness and watching each other greedily and expectantly.122

Nursi concludes his story by reiterating that there is a great difference between frugality and stinginess, and that if there is any resemblance between them, it is in appearance only. Just as humility is a praiseworthy quality superficially resembling but different to the bad quality of servility, and dignity is a laudable virtue superficially similar to but different from the bad quality of haughtiness, so too frugality, which was one of the elevated qualities of the Prophet (PBWH) and indeed is one of the things on which the Divine wisdom in the order of the universe depends, bears no relation to stinginess, which is a mixture of baseness, avarice, miserliness and greed. There is merely a superficial resemblance between them.123

Excess and wastefulness

Profligacy, Nursi argues, leads to greed, and greed has three consequences. The first is dissatisfaction with one’s lot: As for dissatisfaction, it destroys endeavour and enthusiasm for work, and causes the dissatisfied person to complain instead of giving thanks, and makes him lazy. Such a person abandons possessions which, though few in number, are licit, and seeks possessions which are illicit and free of trouble. And he sacrifices his self-respect on that way, and even his honour.124

The second consequence of greed is disappointment and, eventually, loss: For the greedy person drives away what he wishes for, is considered disagreeable, and is deprived of assistance and help. He is living proof of the saying: “The greedy person is unsuccessful and suffers loss.” 125

509

The Qur’an Revealed  Nursi then turns to the world of flora and fauna, where, he claims, the ease with which sustenance comes to living things is connected directly with the levels of impotence, resignation and contentment that they express. Greed and contentment have their effects in the animal kingdom in accordance with a most extensive law. For instance, the natural contentment of trees needy for sustenance makes their sustenance hasten to them; this shows the huge benefits of contentment. The fact that animals run after their sustenance greedily and with difficulty and deficiency demonstrates the great loss that greed tends to engender. Also, the contentment apparent through their tongues of disposition of all helpless young and a pleasant food like milk flowing out to them from an unexpected place, while wild animals greedily attack their deficient and dirty sustenance, prove our claim in clear fashion. Also, the contented attitude of fat fish being the means of their perfect sustenance, and intelligent animals like foxes and monkeys remaining puny and weak because they cannot find sufficient sustenance, although they pursue it with greed, again show the degree to which greed is the cause of hardship and contentment the cause of ease. 126

All of this, Nursi says, shows that licit sustenance comes easily as a result of the expression of impotence and need, and not because of ability and will. Indeed, he argues, licit sustenance is bestowed in inverse proportion to ability and will, illustrating the Prophetic Tradition which has it that “Contentment is an unfailing treasure” and demonstrating that greed leads to nothing but loss and abasement.127 The third and arguably the most deleterious consequence of greed is the destruction of sincerity and the damage which it inflicts on actions pertaining to the hereafter. For if a God-fearing person suffers from greed, Nursi writes, he will naturally desire the regard and attention of others, which in turn will harm his sincerity and jeopardise his future happiness. Summing up, Nursi says that profligacy leads to a lack of contentment, which in turn destroys any enthusiasm for work or effort. It leads to indolence, dissatisfaction and endless complaints. Indeed, whenever you meet a wasteful, immoderate person, you hear complaints. No matter how rich he is, his tongue still complains. But when you meet even the poorest but contented person, you hear only thanks. Also, it destroys sincerity and opens the door to hypocrisy. And it destroys self-respect and points the way to begging.128

Frugality, on the other hand, results in contentment, and a consequence of contentment, Nursi writes, is self-esteem. Frugality encourages effort and work, increases enthusiasm and is a spur to action. The contentment which comes about as a result of frugality leads to appreciation of life’s bounties and makes it hard, if not impossible, for one to complain. Throughout his life, the contented person is thankful. And in so far as he is independent of others through his contentment, he does not seek their regard. The door of sincerity is opened, the door of hypocrisy closed.129

Nursi ends his discourse on frugality with another observation grounded in his own life experiences.

510

  Practical Wisdom and Pastoral Theology I once observed the fearsome harm of wastefulness and excess on a broad scale. Nine years ago I visited a fortunate town. Since it was winter, I could not see its sources of wealth. Several times the town’s mufti, may God have mercy on him, said to me, “Our people are poor.” These words touched me. For the following five or six years, I felt continual pity for the people of the town. Eight years later in the summer, I again visited it. I looked at the gardens and recalled the words of the late mufti. “Glory be to God!”, I said, “These gardens’ crops are far greater than the needs of the town. Its people should be very rich.” I was amazed. Then I understood through remembering a fact which has never deceived me, and is my guide in understanding other truths, that the abundance and plenty had disappeared on account of wastefulness and excess, so that although the town possessed such sources of wealth, the late mufti used to say: “Our people are poor.” Indeed, just as giving zakat and being frugal and economical is proven by experience to be the cause of increase and plenty in goods and possessions, so too are there innumerable events showing that wastefulness and failure to give zakat cause increase and plenty to be taken away.130

511

Chapter Sixteen Civilization And so, O wretched people of misguidance and dissipation! What accomplishment of yours, what art, what perfection, what civilization, what progress can confront this awesome silence of the grave, this crushing despair? Where can you find that true consolation that is the most urgent need of the human spirit? 1

Origins of the concept

Like its sister concept, culture, ‘civilization’ is one of the major constructs to have been born of the Enlightenment project, although arguably it has its roots in the great voyages of discovery made by the Europeans from the late fifteenth century onwards, which is arguably when the notion of what it means to be ‘civilized’ first begins to become apparent. More easily described than defined, and more amenable to connotation than denotation, the term ‘civilization’ remains semantically problematic some three centuries after its first regular usage in academic circles. It is in the 18th century that the word first appears in a form that would be recognisable to us today. Emerging in France in intellectual circles, ‘civilization’ appeared as a word which carried a mixture of empirical and polemical meanings, and which from the outset was pregnant with strong ideological connotations.2 It referred to something that was, particularly to those who helped to give birth to the concept and nurture its growth, plainly observable: namely the fact that people like themselves, who comprised the nation’s elite, lived and behaved according to norms and standards which were very different from those of the warrior elites of the earlier ages or the artisans and peasants of their own time. These standards, which included manners of speech, judgement and conduct in general, represented a particular way of living – something that today we might call a ‘lifestyle’ – that was different from, and by implication superior to, that of the ‘other’. This way of life was deemed ‘civilized’ and indicated ‘civilization’. Moreover, in addition to the obvious empirical connotations, the term also carried clear normative and polemic overtones. For those who used the term, ‘civilization’ represented a thing of value: to be ‘civilized’ was an attainment that was both a badge of honour and a mark of superiority. This evaluative meaning of the term was brought into focus most dramatically by its typical opposites, namely ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’.

513

The Qur’an Revealed  The word ‘culture’ also entered socio-political discourse with distinctly ideological overtones. The term ‘culture’ has its roots in the efflorescence of German romantic philosophy and its focus on the particular, the traditional and the emotional aspects of historical reality rather than its universal, legalistic or rational aspects. One reason for this, perhaps, is that the burgeoning nationalism of the German peoples posited language as the main element which cemented their nationality – which is wholly understandable, it has been argued, given the absence of a central government in which to ground their feelings of nationhood. The linguistic – i.e. ‘cultural’ – heritage of the German people was, or so it was claimed, expressed best in proverb, poetry, fable and the whole range of customary or ‘traditional’ behaviours which distinguishes folk culture from urban civilization. Consequently, it was argued that in staying loyal to their original folk roots, the Germans had retained their authenticity as a people close to the very source of creation, rather than allow themselves to be absorbed into the kind of Romanic-Germanic mix which held sway elsewhere in Western Europe; this in turn led to the belief that the Germans had ‘culture’, while the rest had only ‘civilization’.3 Like ‘civilization’, then, the word ‘culture’ was impregnated with evaluative overtones from the outset. However, despite their different histories and usages, for many the terms have been seen and used as though they were synonymous and thus interchangeable, with some scholars seemingly impervious to the subtle differences of meaning in the two terms.4 It has been argued that the perceived synonymy of ‘culture’ with ‘civilization’ is the result of an earlier, purposeful conflation of the two terms by well-meaning anthropologists who wished to deal with each of them in its strictly technical, non-evaluative sense – despite the fact, of course, that no consensus has ever existed as to what this technical sense actually was, or indeed whether the term ‘civilization’ in particular could ever be bleached free of the ideological colourings it has possessed since its first appearance. What concerns us is how, in popular consciousness, the two terms are more or less interwoven, and how their nuances and differences in meaning are, for the most part, lost on the masses. More important, particularly for Muslims, is how the sheer ‘otherness’ of Qurano-Islamic ‘civilization’ continues to guarantee its perceived inferiority in the minds of those for whom the only true ‘civilization’ is the one which is able to flex more muscle: power, after all, is what ultimately separates the civilizational men from the sub-civilizational boys. One may talk of a multiplicity of cultures and civilizations – or, indeed, of a multiplicity of modernities5 - but for those societies in which these terms were fashioned and cultivated, the superiority of ‘our’ civilization over that of the ‘Other’, and of ‘our’ culture over the cultures of the ‘less-civilized’, remains axiomatic. In the context of the subject at hand, no more clearly is this demonstrated than in the attitude of the secular West to the rest of the world in general, and the Muslim world in particular. While the ‘civilized-savage’ dichotomy was invoked initially by European elites with reference to sections of their own national societies, with the physical and cultural colonisation of the Muslim world in the early modern period, ‘civilization’ was a term used to connote the perceived cultural, technological and military supremacy of the Western powers over the peoples they subjugated. While this sense of innate superiority is multi-factorial in nature, there are a number of factors which stand out above the rest as being particularly worthy of consideration. One is the notion that in any encounter between the West and the rest, the West is by default superior because it is

514

  Civilization the West – and Europe in particular – which is responsible for the creation of modernity, the ‘gift to humanity’ par excellence of the Enlightenment project. Linked inextricably to this is the notion of the West as the birthplace of benign innovation and originality. The Europeans, it has been posited, are constantly and consistently seen as originators.6 A consequence of this is that the contributions of non-European cultures to Western civilization are, for the most part, damned with faint praise and thus in effect dismissed: consider, for example, the Western unwillingness or inability to see Muslim philosophy as anything other than a vehicle for the communication of Greek thought to Renaissance Europe.7 However, it is not merely philosophy that the West parades as a child of its own begetting: in similar fashion it looks upon notions such as freedom, justice, democracy and equality as though they are the monopoly of Western endeavours.

Nursi’s uses of the term ‘civilization’

Before we try to understand how Said Nursi approached the issue of civilization in general, and Western civilization in particular, we need to bear in mind that the ways in which he uses the term reflect in one sense the definitional nebulosity which surrounds it. As we have seen, the term is a notoriously difficult one to pin down. Nursi is not helped, of course, by the fact that the term ‘civilization’ was, given the time and milieu in which he was writing, a relatively recent addition to the Muslim world’s conceptual lexicon. If those who coined the term were unsure of its precise denotation and inconsistent in its use, we should not expect miracles of terminological exactitude from those in the Muslim world who inherited the word from their European adversaries. Yet while Nursi often appears to confuse the reader by using the term without qualifying it, it is clear upon close reading that he knows what he means when he uses it, and that the differences in meaning are in fact quite distinct. Nursi uses the term ‘civilization’ – and occasionally the adjective ‘civilized’ – in three different ways. It would of course be interesting to trace the term through his writings in an attempt to chart its history and see whether the differences in his usage of the term accord in any way with his own developmental journey from the ‘Old Said’ to the ‘New Said’ and on to the ‘Third Said’, but sadly that is way beyond the scope of the present work. The task here is not an analysis of semantic shifts over time but rather one of disambiguation and the teasing apart of the different meanings of the term as used in various passages of Bediuzzaman’s writings. Fortunately, given the very different contexts in which the term appears, our task is not an overly onerous one; bearing in mind the tripartite typology upon which we are about to expound, it is relatively easy to know exactly what he is talking about when he uses the term – even on those occasions when his omission of the qualifier ‘Western’ may confuse the reader as to exactly which kind of ‘civilization’ it is that he is describing.

The first way

So what are these three ways in which he uses the term ‘civilization’? Well firstly, on a number of occasions, his use of the term is similar to that of the European writers among whose writings it first appeared, namely with reference to socio-cultural hierarchies within a single society. In the Twenty-Seventh Word, for example, he uses ‘civilization’ to denote the way of

515

The Qur’an Revealed  life of those who live in towns or cities and who are what he claims “more fitted for social life”.8 ‘Civilized’ in this sense may be contrasted with its implied opposite, namely ‘uncouth’ or ‘village-minded’. To be civilized in this sense is to be refined, and to have adopted the ways of city dwellers. This is ‘civilization’ in the popularly understood sense of the term, namely a life that is more refined than one led under less salubrious cultural and economic circumstances. It is possible that Nursi was influenced in this by the way the term was being used in European writings of the time, particularly during his ‘Old Said’ period. The likelihood, however, is that he was just as influenced by trends in classical Muslim thought, for if we look back far enough, we find traces of a similar concept in medieval works on Muslim statecraft. For example, Farabi’s contention that ‘absolute goodness and perfection can be achieved only in urban societies’ had a tremendous impact on how Muslim thinkers saw Muslim society, particularly insofar as its crude bifurcation into the madani versus the badawi is concerned.9 While this bifurcation is at heart an evaluative one, its connotations are very different to those obtaining in either the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft dichotomy or in the distinction drawn by those anthropologists and cultural hegemonists who openly spoke of the ‘civilized’ versus the ‘barbarian’.10 In invoking the madani-badawi split, Nursi does not seek to prove the absolute superiority of one societal form over another. Rather, he merely seeks to point out that, in the context of the time and milieu in which he was writing, urban life is more conducive to man’s development as a social being.

The second way

More frequently, Nursi uses the term in its broader, socio-anthropological sense to denote an extended social group with a distinctive cultural and economic organisation, be it human civilization in general or localised civilizations in particular. In the Twentieth Word, for example, he talks about ‘human civilization’, which presupposes on his part an understanding of the term in its broadest, least value-laden sense.11 His wonderment at the ‘marvels’ of human civilization, also in the Twentieth Word, implies that he considers development and advancement to be two important determinants of what it means to be civilized in the widest sense of the word. However, he is quick to point out that the ‘wonders of civilization’ are insignificant in comparison with the ‘natural’ wonders made manifest by God in the cosmos.12 In the Twenty-Third Word, he uses the term ‘civilization’ without any qualifiers – something he does with frustrating regularity. However, from the context it soon becomes clear what he is about. He is talking here about the ‘attainments of civilization’ – attainments which, he says, are the result not of any inherent ability of man to conquer, but of his inherent weakness: they have been bestowed on him by Divine grace on account of his innate impotence.13 Man resembles a delicate and petted child in the universe. There is a great strength in his weakness and great power in his impotence. For it is through the strength of his weakness and power of his impotence that beings have been subjected to him. If man understands his weakness and offers supplications verbally and by state and conduct, and recognizes his impotence and seeks help, since he has offered thanks by exhibiting them, he achieves his aims and his desires are subjugated to him in a way far exceeding what he could achieve with his own power. Only, he sometimes wrongly attributes to his own power the

516

  Civilization attainment of a wish that has been obtained for him through the supplications offered by the tongue of his disposition. For example, the strength in the weakness of a chick causes the mother hen to attack a lion. And its newly-born lion cub subjugates to itself the savage and hungry lioness, leaving the mother hungry and the cub full. See this strength in weakness and manifestation of Divine mercy, which are worthy of notice! Just as through crying or asking or looking unhappy, a child subjugates the strong to himself, and is so successful in getting what he wants that he could not obtain one thousandth of it with a thousand times his own strength. That is to say, since weakness and impotence excite compassion and a sense of protection towards him, the child can subjugate heroes to himself with his tiny finger. Now, should such a child with foolish conceit deny the compassion and accuse the protection saying: “I subjugate these with my own strength”, of course he will receive a slap. In the same way, if, like Qarun, man says: I have been given it on account of the knowledge I have,11 that is, “I gained this through my own knowledge and my own power” in a way that demonstrates ingratitude and denies his Creator’s mercy and accuses His wisdom, he will of course deserve a punishing blow. This means that man’s domination and human advances and the attainments of civilization, which are to be observed, have been made subject to him not through his attracting them or conquering them or through combat, but due to his weakness. He has been assisted because of his impotence. They have been bestowed on him due to his indigence. He has been inspired with them due to his ignorance. They have been given him due to his need. And the reason for his domination is not strength and the power of knowledge, but the compassion and clemency of the Sustainer and Divine mercy and wisdom: they have subjugated things to him. Yes, what clothes man, who is defeated by vermin like eyeless scorpions and legless snakes, in silk from a tiny worm and feeds him honey from a poisonous insect is not his own power, but the subjugation of the Sustainer and the bestowal of the Most Merciful, which are the fruits of his weakness. 14

In other words, civilizational development is a direct consequence not of human effort but of the Divine subjugation of cosmic causes to man. Again, here a broad, largely socioanthropological definition of the term is assumed, and his usage of the term in this way is relatively simple to distinguish from the other two. Interestingly, Nursi turns on its head the notion that civilization comes about through the interplay of man’s innate intellectual and physical powers; rather, he serves to deflate the human ego and prevent man from claiming civilizational success as his own by pointing out that if success was granted to him, it was granted because of the weakness, ignorance and greed which are fundamental to his creational make-up.

The third way

Reflecting a period in which the European model was being lauded in certain quarters as exemplifying the kind of societal structure to which the Muslim world should aspire, the third and most interesting use of the term ‘civilization’ in Nursi’s writings is a pejorative one. Whether the term appears alone, as it often does, or with the qualifiers ‘European’, ‘Western’ or ‘modern’, the message is unmistakable: this ‘civilization’ is the one which connotes more than anything else the idea of European cultural and socio-political hegemony, the

517

The Qur’an Revealed  decadence of the West and the decline of religion – a civilization which, in short, is to be treated as suspect at all times. However, before we engage with Nursi’s take on Western civilization, there are four important points that we should bear in mind. Firstly, we need to be aware Nursi often uses the word ‘civilization’ without qualifying adjectives when he is talking not about civilization in the broader, cultural-anthropological sense of the word, but about Western civilization in particular. Again, while it may be offputting to a first time reader, particularly given the fact that he does often use qualifiers such as ‘modern’, ‘corrupt’, ‘dissolute’ and the like, it is not that difficult to understand what he means from the context. Secondly, we should mention that he often uses the terms ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ as though they are synonymous. Today, it may be argued that the ‘West’ is an ideological entity rather than a point on the compass, taking in Australasia as well as the capitalist powerhouse that is Japan. In Nursi’s formative years, however, ‘the West’ was a geographical entity that was in effect coextensive with ‘Europe’, which was after all the wellspring of Western civilization, the laboratory in which the Enlightenment project was concocted and the birthplace of modernity, arguably the Enlightenment’s most precious offspring. Thirdly, we should not understand Nursi’s opposition to what are for him the negative outcomes of modernity in general, and ‘Western civilization’ in particular, as being in any way indicative of an aversion on his part to the scientific and technological developments which have come about in their wake. As we have seen in the brief biographical sketch in the Introduction, Nursi was no stranger to state persecution on account of his writings, and one of the many accusations leveled at him by the authorities was his supposed opposition to the accoutrements of modern life and the advancements made possible by modern learning and research. His reaction to such accusations was always one of bemused indignation: Another thing attributed to me in the police report, which has never ever occurred to me, is that since I criticize the evils and faults of modern civilization, I do not accept the use of the radio, aeroplanes and the railway; I am accused of opposing modern progress. [Yet what I actually said is] that Almighty God’s great bounties of the aeroplane, railway and radio should be responded to with great thanks; however, mankind had not done this and had rained down bombs on men’s heads with the planes. While thanks for the vast bounty of the radio would be shown by making it a universal million-tongued reciter of the Quran which would allow people all over the earth to listen to the Quran. And in the explanations in the Twentieth Word of Quranic predictions about the wonders of civilization, I said concerning the allusions of one verse that the unbelievers would defeat the Islamic world by means of the railway. Although I urged Muslims to work towards these wonders, I am accused at the end of the indictment, because of the previous public prosecutor’s malice, of “opposing modern advances like the railway, aeroplane, and radio.” 15

Fourthly, Nursi’s approach to the issue of civilization changed considerably during the course of his life, as he himself confirms: Since Western science and civilization had to a degree a place in the Old Said’s thought, when the New Said embarked on his journeys of the mind and of the heart, they were transformed into sicknesses of the heart and were the cause of excessive difficulties. The

518

  Civilization New Said therefore wanted to shake off from his mind that fallacious philosophy and dissolute civilization. In order to silence the emotions of his evil-commanding soul, which testified in favour of Europe, he was compelled to hold in his spirit the following discussion - which in one respect is very brief and in another is long - with the collective personality of Europe.16

That ‘Western science and civilization had to a degree a place in the Old Said’s thought’ can be understood, as we shall see shortly, from his early writings. That he lived to regret this is, by his own admission, also clear. However, Nursi’s natural humility and self-deprecation need to be taken into account here, for even his detractors would be hard pressed to find evidence that he ‘testified in favour of Europe’ with the fervor he seems to imply. In this passage, Nursi is referring to the period of his life later characterised as the era of the ‘Old Said’ in the late 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th, when, like many other young and influential Muslim speakers, he spent much of his energy on politics and the issue of socio-political reform. In any case, an excursus here into the background of both Nursi’s involvement in the constitutional movement and his campaign for educational reform will serve hopefully to contextualise a little more clearly his early approach to the concept of civilization. Influenced directly by the writings of the poet, journalist and social reformer, Namık Kemal (1840-88), and indirectly by the teachings of the likes of the reformer and PanIslamicist, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1838-1897), Nursi in his formative years appears to have been swept along by the late 19th century wave of socio-political reformism which was engulfing the Muslim world and offering its denizens a solution to the degeneration and decline of Muslim society in the face of a rapidly encroaching West.17 Nursi’s awakening occurred, by his own admission, as early as 1892 when, as a sixteen-year old, he read a tract by Namık Kemal which advocated liberation from despotism, self-sacrifice for the sake of the rapidly deteriorating Ottoman nation, and the pursuit of progress and prosperity. Kemal’s ideas clearly had an impact on Nursi in his formative years, and in both his early writings and his bouts of political activism, one sees that he was a fervent believer in the possibility of restoring Islamic civilization – of which the Ottoman Empire had once been the epitome - to its former glory, chiefly through the twin tools of constitutionalism and education.18 Nursi’s support for constitutionalism, and his involvement in the constitutional movement which culminated in the Young Turk ‘revolution’ of 1908, will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter. Suffice it here to say that the ‘Old Said’ saw in constitutionalism an opportunity for the Ottoman nation to progress more rapidly and to considerably greater heights than it had in the past. However, constitutionalism would, he averred, work only if it were imbued with the spirit of Islam and adherence to the precepts of religion. Like many of the reformist thinkers of his era, Nursi believed that Islam was by its very nature a receptacle for the seeds of progress and civilization: the past glories of the Muslim world had proven as much, and all that was needed now for that ‘true civilization’ to be realised once more was for Muslims to reaffirm their faith and not fight shy of the new political ideas that were being formulated. A few days into the ‘Second Constitutional Era’ following the Young Turk ‘revolution’, Nursi gave a speech entitled Address to Freedom in which he outlined the objectives of constitutionalism, one of which was the restoration and rejuvenation of Islamic civilization.

519

The Qur’an Revealed  O Freedom! (...) I convey these glad tidings to you, that if you make the Sharī‘ah, which is life itself, the source of life, and if you grow in that paradise, this oppressed nation will progress a thousand times further than in former times. If, that is, it takes you as its guide in all matters and does not besmirch you through harbouring personal enmity and thoughts of revenge... Freedom has exhumed us from the grave of desolation and despotism, and summoned us to the paradise of unity and love of nation. The doors of a suffering-free paradise of progress and civilization have been opened to us... The Constitution, which is in accordance with the Sharī‘ah, is the introduction to the sovereignty of the nation and invites us to enter like the treasury-guard of Paradise. O my oppressed compatriots! Let us go and enter! 19

His references to Islamic law and precepts notwithstanding, there is no evidence to suggest that he ever supported in any way, shape or form the creation of an Islamic polity of the kind we know today: there is nothing in his writings to suggest that Muslim society be governed along hierocratic lines, or that Muslim law be imposed from above and made to inform all aspects of governance. Nursi’s plea that Islamic law be made ‘the source of life’ was addressed not to the ruling elite in particular, or to the religious scholars, but to the Muslim nation in general. Even as the ‘Old Said’, Nursi’s concern was the amelioration of the faith of the commonalty of Muslims rather than the advocacy of Islamic law as a political panacea. Furthermore, his talk of the possibility of a ‘suffering-free paradise of progress and civilization’ shows that even as the ‘Old Said’, his use of the term ‘civilization’ was highly nuanced. Despite the lack of any qualifying adjective, the term is used here to signify what Nursi sometimes calls ‘true civilization’, which can mean only one thing: the civilization facilitated by adherence to the religion of Islam. From the outset he made it quite clear that if Muslims were to adopt anything from outside their own tradition, they must do it selectively in order to avoid the ‘sins and evils’ of civilization. We shall take with pleasure the points of Europe – like technology and industry – that will assist us in progress and civilization. However (...) we shall forbid the sins and evils of civilization from entering the bounds of freedom and our civilization with the sword of the Sharī‘ah, so that the young people in our civilization will be protected by the pure, cold spring of life of the Sharī‘ah . We must imitate the Japanese in acquiring civilization, for in taking only the virtues of civilization from Europe they preserved their national customs, which are the leaven of every nation’s continuance. 20

Insight into Nursi’s early approach to civilization can be also gained by considering the efforts he expended in the area of educational reform. That the Ottoman Empire had been outpaced on all fronts by the achievements of Europe was lost on no-one, but the notion that the perceived backwardness of Ottoman society was somehow the fault of Islam was something which Nursi could obviously not accept. For him, part of the problem lay in the parlous state of the traditional education system, and it was to the amelioration of this that he dedicated much of his energy during his ‘First Said’ period. To bring the traditional madrasa system into the twentieth century by updating their curricula in the light of modern scientific and technological advances became one of his most cherished objectives. In order to do this, he believed that a reconciliation between the three main branches of the educational

520

  Civilization system – the madrasa ; the new secular school or maktab ; and the Sufi tekke – was possible, and that a synthesis of the disciplines taught in them could be achieved. The people of the medreses accuse those of the mektebs of weakness in belief because of their literalist interpretation of certain matters, while the latter look on the former as ignorant and unreliable because they have no knowledge of modern science. Then the scholars of the medreses regard the people of the tekkes as followers of innovations. 21

To remedy this, Nursi advocated the teaching of modern science in the medreses in place of ‘obsolete ancient philosophy’; the teaching of the religious sciences in the new schools; and the involvement of scholars from the medrese system in the Sufi tekkes. He also addressed the issue of popular preachers, from whom most of the population received their instruction in the basics of Islamic teachings. The preachers, he said ...should be searching scholars, so that they can prove what they claim, and subtle philosophers so that they do not spoil the balance of Islamic law, and to be eloquent and convincing. It is essential that they are such.22

Nursi’s plans for what he called the Medresetü’z Zehra23 were founded on, among other things, his belief that religion represented man’s heart and conscience, while science represented his power of reason. Nursi made a clear distinction between the ‘religious sciences’ and the ‘sciences of civilization’: the former, he claimed, served to illuminate the conscience, while the function of the latter was to illuminate the intellect. By civilization here it is almost certain that Nursi was alluding to the fruits of Western scientific and technological endeavours, which by this time had far outstripped those of the Muslim world. In order for progress to obtain, he claimed, both need to work in tandem: The religious sciences are the light of the conscience and the modern sciences are the light of the reason; the truth becomes manifest through the combining of the two. The students’ endeavour will take flight on these two wings. When they are separated it gives rise to bigotry in the one, and wiles and scepticism in the other.24

When the ‘Second Constitutional’ movement proved to be nothing more than a case of old wine in new bottles, and when plans for the establishment of a new ‘university’ in Eastern Anatolia were stymied time after time and, eventually, mothballed indefinitely, Nursi was understandably dismayed. Indeed, it may be the sense of impotence and distress he felt at the inability or unwillingness of the Constitutionalists to follow through with their plans and remain faithful to their promises, together with the frustration over the failure of his plans for a new educational system, which are reflected in the self-denigratory feelings he expresses; the passage in which he indicts his ‘evil-commanding soul’ for testifying ‘in favour of Europe’ is one such example. The failure of the Young Turk ‘revolution’ was one of the factors which fuelled the transition of the ‘Old Said’ to the ‘New Said’, and with it a change of approach to the notion of civilization. The mistake of the Young Turks: they did not know our religion is the basis of life; they thought nation and Islam were different. They imagined civilization would endure and always be dominant, and saw happiness and prosperity to lie within it. Now time has

521

The Qur’an Revealed  shown civilization’s system to be corrupt and harmful; incontrovertible experience has taught us this. Religion is the very life of life, its light and its basis. This nation will be revived only through the revival of religion. Islam understood this. Contrary to other religions, our nation has progressed to the extent we adhered to our religion. And it has declined to the degree we neglected it. This is an historical fact which occurred due to our feigned forgetfulness.25

The ‘New Said’ and civilization

As the above passage shows, the emergence of the ‘New Said’ in the early 1920s heralded a sea-change not only in Nursi’s stance vis-a-vis politics and political involvement but also in his approach to ‘civilization’ – which, from this point onwards, he deemed coextensive with Western culture in general, and with what he considered to be its negative aspects and outcomes in particular.26 Nursi’s approach to ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ or ‘Western civilization’ is, during the ‘New Said’ phase and beyond, characterised by his insistence on what we may term its inherent dual personality disorder. There are, he says, two Europes: One follows the sciences that serve justice and right and activities beneficial for the life of society through the inspiration it has received from true Christianity. This first Europe I am not addressing. Rather, I am addressing the second, corrupt Europe which, through the darkness of the philosophy of naturalism that considers the evils of civilization to be its virtues, has driven humankind to vice and misguidance.27

There is no need to dwell too much on the first or ‘positive’ face shown by Europe, mainly because for Said Nursi, this ‘first Europe’ was never the problem; nor was it in any sense a threat to mankind and human wellbeing. This is not to say that Nursi does not discuss the positives in Western civilization, because he does. However, even in his most generous appraisals of the true virtues of Western civilization, his ambivalence is all too evident. Nursi gives credit where credit is due, but never fails to point out that many of the positives of Western civilization – liberty, justice, democracy, benign scientific and technological advancement – are neither Christian nor European in origin. Nor, he says, are they recent phenomena. I cannot deny that there are numerous virtues in civilization, but they are neither the property of Christianity, nor the invention of Europe. Nor are they the product of this century; they are common property, produced by the conjunction of minds and ideas, from the laws of the revealed religions, out of innate need, and particularly from the Islamic revolution brought about by the Shari’a of Muhammad. No one can claim ownership of them. 28

Interestingly enough, Nursi also says that these benefits are not down solely to the advent of the Prophet and the spread of Islam. Rather, they are common property, produced by the coming together of minds and ideas, from the cross-pollination of laws and moral precepts brought by the monotheistic faiths – none of which, interestingly enough, originated in the West – and out of sheer human need. No-one, he states firmly, can claim ownership over them.

522

  Civilization

Western civilization: an edifice built on rotten foundations?

With regard to the fact that for Nursi it has two faces – a positive one, grounded in the last vestiges of its Judaeo-Christian legacy, and a negative one born of its repudiation of Church teachings and the subsequent Enlightenment project – we have described Europe as having a form of dual personality disorder. With regard to its negative face in particular, and the fact that, according to Nursi, this second, corrupt Europe considers ‘the evils of civilization to be its virtues’, we see through the dual personality disorder to an underlying schizophrenia of the most deleterious and destructive kind. On my journey of the spirit at that time I said to Europe’s collective personality, which apart from beneficial science and the virtues of civilization, holds in its hand meaningless, harmful philosophy and noxious, dissolute civilization: Know this, O second Europe! You hold a diseased and misguided philosophy in your right hand and a harmful and corrupt civilization in your left, and claim, “Mankind’s happiness is with these two!” May your two hands be broken and may these two filthy gifts of yours be the death of you! And so they shall be! O you unhappy spirit which spreads unbelief and ingratitude! Can a man who is suffering torments and is afflicted with ghastly calamities in both his spirit and his conscience and his mind and his heart be happy through his body wallowing in a superficial, deceptive glitter and wealth? Can it be said that he is happy? Do you not see that on feeling despair at some minor matter and his hope for some illusory wish being lost and his being disillusioned at some insignificant business, such a person’s sweet imaginings become bitter for him? Do you not see that what is pleasant torments him, and that the world constricts and becomes a prison for him? What happiness can you guarantee for such a wretched person who, on account of your inauspiciousness, has suffered the blows of misguidance in the deepest corners of his heart and to the very foundations of his spirit? How can you ensure happiness for one who, because of this, has lost all hope and become filled with pain? Can it be said of someone whose body is in a false and fleeting paradise, and whose heart and spirit are suffering the torments of Hell, that he is happy? See, you have led astray wretched mankind in this way. You make them suffer the torments of Hell in a false paradise. 29

At the heart of Europe’s sickness, Nursi opines, are the twin ‘gifts’ of ‘diseased and misguided philosophy’ and ‘harmful and corrupt civilization’, by-products of the naturalist and materialist currents which emerged in the wake of the Enlightenment. Nursi’s critique of the negative face of Europe and the ills of Western civilization, here as in other parts of the Risale, is as penetrating as it is bleak. It becomes particularly so from the Twenties onwards as the juggernaut of Western materialism began to accelerate with renewed energy after the horrors of the First World War. For Nursi, war is an inevitable by-product of Western civilization, which, he says, is a threat to moral and social life because it justifies the twin evils of force and selfinterest. Furthermore, it depends on racism and ‘negative nationalism’ as instruments of social cohesion, and on conflict as the guiding principle of life. As a result, he avers, it has destroyed mankind’s happiness. 30

523

The Qur’an Revealed  By reason of its philosophy, present-day civilization accepts ‘force’ as the point of support in the life of society. It takes as its aim ‘benefits,’ and considers the principle of its life to be ‘conflict.’ It considers the bond between communities to be ‘racialism and negative nationalism.’ While its aim is to provide ‘amusements’ for gratifying the appetites of the soul and increasing man’s needs. However, the mark of force is aggression. And since the benefits are insufficient to meet all needs, their mark is that everyone tussles and jostles over them. The mark of conflict is contention, and the mark of racialism, aggression, since it thrives on devouring others. Thus, it is because of these principles of civilization that despite all its virtues, it has provided a sort of superficial happiness for only twenty per cent of mankind and cast eighty per cent into distress and poverty. 31

‘Civilization’ has destroyed human happiness, he explains, because the mark of force is aggression, while the mark of self-interest is the struggle to obtain benefits at the expense of others. The mark of racism is hostility towards others, while the mark of conflict is war. A society or civilization based on such destructive principles is devoted to the gratification of man’s basest passions. Most people, Nursi, claims, have been reduced to hardship and misery by the demands, dictates and allures of ‘civilization’. Man’s innate nobility has also been marred, he says, as the gradual divorce from sacred values has opened the floodgates of ‘dissipation’, encouraging dissolute living and the ‘soul’s base appetites.’ 32 Socio-economic inequalities are also the hallmark of this modern civilization, Nursi adds, with the Western attitude being “So long as I am full, what is it to me that others die of hunger?” and “You work so that I can live in ease and comfort’.33 By allowing the rift between the classes to widen, Nursi argued that the West had engendered so much strife and sedition that it was on the brink of bringing humanity to its knees, giving rise to the struggle between capital and labour – itself the precursor of two World Wars and bloodshed and disorder on a hitherto unknown scale.34 Western civilization was buttressed at this point by what must have seemed to Nursi to have been two of the Enlightenment’s most dangerous offspring: materialist – and, particularly, Freudian – psychoanalysis, which places man at the centre of his universe, in obvious contradistinction to the Nursian view of the ‘human I’; and scientism, which bestows absolute epistemological primacy upon science, advocating the application of scientific theory and methods in all fields of enquiry about the world, including areas which are, its detractors claim, outside its remit, such as morality, art, ethics and religion.35 Scientism itself was one of the products of the Enlightenment project, and resonated heavily with the proponents of atheistic materialism, itself an offshoot of the biological determinism that was fast becoming the most privileged of the scientific discourses prevalent in the West. Nursi accuses the ‘second’ Europe of being built on the rotten foundations of that particular branch of scientific naturalism which deems the cosmos to be no more than the sum of its physical parts, all of which are in conflict with each other: a vast, naturalistic theatre of cruelty, one may argue, where nature is ‘red in tooth and claw’, and the life of man, lived out in a state of constant, chaotic competition with others, is ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ 36 O second, corrupted Europe! A number of your rotten and baseless foundations are as follows. You say: “Every living being owns itself and works for itself and struggles for its own pleasure. It has the right to life. Its aim and purpose and all its endeavour is to

524

  Civilization live and continue its life.” And supposing to be conflict the compassionate, munificent manifestations of the universal law of the All-Generous Creator which is manifest through plants hastening to the assistance of animals and animals hastening to the assistance of man through a principle of mutual assistance, which is conformed to in perfect obedience by all the principal beings of the universe, you declare idiotically: “Life is conflict.” How can particles of food hastening with total eagerness to nourish the cells of the body— a manifestation of that principle of mutual assistance— be conflict? How can it be a clash and struggle? Rather, that hastening and assistance is mutual help at the command of a Munificent Sustainer. And one of your rotten foundations is, as you say: “Everything owns itself.” A clear proof that nothing owns itself is this: among causes, the most noble and with regard to choice the one with the most extensive will is man. But out of a hundred parts of the most obvious acts connected to man’s will like thinking, speaking and eating, only a single, doubtful part is given to the hand of his will and is within the sphere of his power. So how can it be said of one who does not own one hundredth of the most obvious acts such as those that he owns himself`? If the highest beings with the most extensive will are thus inhibited from real power and ownership to this degree, someone who says: “The rest of beings, animate and inanimate, own themselves” merely proves that he is more animal than the animals and more lifeless and unconscious than inanimate beings.37

The overriding concern in these passages is over the way that values have been inverted: while revelation and religion had always presented the cosmos as an arena in which the principles of mutual assistance were paramount, the new wave of naturalistic thinking turned this on its head and interpreted it as conflict instead. That anything positive might come out of real conflict clearly made no sense to Nursi, for conflict is destructive and dissipative rather than constructive and conducive to harmony and balance, both of which underpin the workings of the cosmos. Darwinistic ‘natural selection’, the notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ and the gradual encroachment of this wholly naturalistic way of thinking into the Muslim mindset disturbed Nursi intensely, fearful as he was for the faith of a people who were all to ready to embrace the ways of the West in toto in order to save themselves from the mire of sociopolitical and technological backwardness. Add to this the materialist conception of history championed by Marx and finding expression at this time in the rise of communism and one is able to understand more readily the reason for Nursi’s disquiet. In one sense, the West was clearly no longer just a geographical entity: just as the West is the place where the physical sun sets, for Nursi it now became synonymous with the place where the ‘sun’ of religion had disappeared. The ‘justice and right’ that were outgrowths of ‘true Christianity’ were now being overshadowed by a dark, disturbing and extremely deleterious philosophy and way of life which, as God was declared either dead, dying or insignificant, and absolute values became increasingly obsolescent, placed man firmly at the centre of his own universe. The centrality of man in the naturalistic schema is highlighted by Nursi in his reference to another of the ‘rotten’ foundations of Western civilization, namely the insistence that everything – including man – ‘owns itself ’. The logical corollary of the ‘death of God’, or at least His ‘retirement’ from active duty, is that man should find himself free, unfettered by

525

The Qur’an Revealed  obligation and accountability. But in order to justify his own autonomy, he must first justify the autonomy of all ‘natural’ beings. This he does with the help of naturalism, which, as has been pointed out already in Chapter Three, declares nature to be independent, self-sufficient and self-referential rather than dependent, needy and ‘Other-indicative’. All of this is done in the name of human liberation from what are perceived to be the fetters of religion, but ends up, as Nursi points out, in chaining man ever more tightly to the tyranny of unbelief and the oppression of hopelessness. What pushes you into such an error and casts you into this abyss is your one-eyed artfulness. That is, your extraordinary, ill-omened brilliance. Because of that blind genius of yours, you have forgotten your Sustainer, Who is the Creator of all things; you have attributed His works to imaginary Nature and causes, you have divided up the Creator’s property among idols, false gods. In regard to this and in the view of your artfulness, every living creature and every human being has to resist innumerable enemies on his own and struggle to procure his endless needs. And they are compelled to withstand those innumerable enemies and needs with the power of a minute particle, a fine, thread-like will, a fleeting flash-like consciousness, a fast extinguishing flame-like life, a life which passes in a minute. But the capital of those wretched animate creatures is insufficient to answer even one of the thousands of their demands. When smitten by disaster, they can await no salve for their pain other than from deaf, blind causes. They manifest the meaning of the verse: For the prayer of those without faith is nothing but (futile) wandering (in the mind).38 Your dark genius has transformed mankind’s daytime into night. And in order to warm that dark, distressing, unquiet night, you have only illuminated them with deceptive, temporary lamps. Those lamps do not smile with joy in the face of mankind, they rather smirk idiotically at their pitiful and lamentable state. Those lights mock and make fun of them. In the view of your pupils, all living beings are miserable and calamity-stricken, subject to the assaults of oppressors. The world is a place of universal mourning. The sounds in the world are the cries and wails arising from death and suffering. The pupil who has absorbed your instruction thoroughly becomes a pharaoh. But he is an abased pharaoh, who worships the basest things and considers himself to be lord over everything he reckons advantageous. A student of yours is obstinate, but an obstinate wretch who accepts utter abasement for a single pleasure. He demonstrates despicableness to the degree of kissing Satan’s foot for some worthless benefit. And he is a bully. But because he has no point of support in his heart, he is in fact a most impotent bullying braggart. The aim and endeavour of this pupil is to satisfy the lusts of the soul, to cunningly seek his own personal benefits under the screen of patriotism and elf-sacrifice, and work to satisfy his ambition and pride. He loves seriously nothing at all other than himself and sacrifices everything for his own sake.39

Yet, as Nursi points out, the supersession of the Divine by the mundane, and of the sacred by the profane, was patently unable to guarantee happiness to a being who, in the words of Blaise Pascal, had a ‘God-shaped vacuum’ in his heart which could not be filled by any created thing.

526

  Civilization O evil-commanding soul of mankind! Consider the following comparison and see where you have driven mankind. For example, there are two roads before us. We take one of them and see that at every step is some wretched, powerless person. Tyrants are attacking him, seizing his property and goods, and destroying his humble house. Sometimes they wound him as well. It is such that the heavens weep at his pitiful state. Wherever one looks, things are continuing in this vein. The sounds heard on this way are the roars of tyrants and the groans of the oppressed; a universal mourning envelops the entire way. Since through his humanity man is pained at the suffering of others, he is afflicted with a boundless grief. But because his conscience cannot endure so much pain, one who travels this way is compelled to do one of two things: either he strips off his humanity and embracing a boundless savagery bears such a heart that so long as he is safe and sound, he is not affected if all the rest of mankind perish, or else he suppresses the demands of the heart and reason.40 O Europe corrupted with vice and misguidance and drawn far from the religion of Jesus! You have bestowed this hell-like state on the human spirit with your blind genius which, like the Dajjal, has only a single eye. You afterwards understood that this incurable disease casts man down from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low, and reduces him to the basest level of animality. The only remedy you have found for this disease are the fantasies of entertainment and amusement and anodyne diversions which serve to temporarily numb the senses. These remedies of yours are being the death of you, and so they shall be. There! The road you have opened up for mankind and the happiness you have given them resembles this comparison.41

In sacrificing God on the altar of self-worship, the ‘evil-commanding soul of mankind’, typified for Nursi by the ‘evils and faults’ of Western civilization, has dragged him down from ‘the highest of the high’; the blatant anthropocentricity of the ‘Western’ worldview endeavors, for the most part with spectacular success, to prevent man from securing his birth right, from aspiring to the position he occupies in potentia as God’s vicegerent. Man, who has eternal longings and is created with needs and potentialities that can be fulfilled only in a life everlasting, thus becomes constrained by the sheer force of the ‘civilization’ which engulfs and claims ownership over him to consider himself and his world to be finite and fleeting. Trained to think of his finitude, but acutely aware of his inner desire for the infinite, ‘civilized’ man becomes as schizophrenic as the ‘civilization’ in which he is embedded. Schizophrenia, despite its etymology and contrary to popular opinion, is not synonymous with dual or ‘split’ personality. Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis which describes a mental disorder that is characterized chiefly by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. Which, in describing Europe’s inverted notion of what constitutes human virtue, is precisely the diagnosis that Nursi makes with regard to Western civilization. Not only does it see black as white, evil as good, vice as virtue – all emblematic of a mindset whose grasp of reality is skewed beyond comprehension – it denies man his access to transcendence and eternal salvation. To compensate him for his loss, and to deaden his senses to the pain of being separated from his Divine roots, it plies him with distraction after distraction; it even offers, in the form of this or that political ideology or social program, various kinds of ‘heaven on earth’ – most, if not all, of which end up being more hellish than heavenly.

527

The Qur’an Revealed  And so, O wretched people of misguidance and dissipation! What accomplishment of yours, what art, what perfection, what civilization, what progress, can confront this awesome silence of the grave, this crushing despair? Where can you find that true consolation that is the most urgent need of the human spirit? 42

For Nursi, unregenerate man – symbolised here by the dissolute civilization of the ‘West’ – cannot bear the ‘awesome silence’ of the grave and the ‘crushing despair’ that the realisation of his own mortality brings, and as a result attempts to anaesthetise himself through immersion in the distractions and diversions provided by ‘civilization’. Guidance is healing, but fancies block out the feelings. This requires solace, it requires feigned unmindfulness, it requires occupation, it requires entertainment and enchanting desires. Then it can deceive the conscience and put the spirit to sleep so they feel no pain. Otherwise that grievous suffering scorches the conscience; the pain is unendurable, the despair cannot be borne. This means, however far one deviates from the Straight Path, to that extent one is affected in that way, causing the conscience to cry out. Within every pleasure is a pain, a taint. That means glittering civilization, which is a mixture of fancy, lust, amusement and licentiousness, is a deceptive panacea for the ghastly distress arising from misguidance, a poisonous narcotic.43

‘Civilization’ through the prism of literature

Of the various negative aspects of Western civilization highlighted by Nursi, literature is dealt with at some length. At the beginning of his ‘New Said’ period, Nursi made a comparison between Western literature and the Quran, positing the former as an example of the dissolute nature of the self-styled ‘civilization’ of Europe and the latter as the cornerstone of the ‘true civilization’, founded on the principles of Islam. Nursi focuses his critique on the novel, a literary form that had been fashionable among the Westernised Ottomans since the middle of the nineteenth century. Nursi’s portrayal of Western literature in general, and the novel in particular, serves to highlight what he considered to be the intellectual, emotional and psychological foundations upon which the profane ‘civilization’ of Europe was built. In his deconstruction of literature and the novel, one sees what he believed to be the results of the desacralisation of human society and the enthronement of the human ‘I’ as the centre of the post-Enlightenment universe. A state of mind pleasing to the mature, and perfected with their appreciation of meaning, does not gratify the childish, whimsical and dissolute; it does not entertain them. In consequence, those raised amid base, dissolute, carnal and lustful pleasures will not experience spiritual pleasure. Looking with the ‘novel-based’ view of modern literature, which issued from Europe, they will neither see nor experience the elevated subtleties and majestic virtues of the Quran. Their touchstone cannot assay those virtues. There are three areas in which literature promenades; it roams within their bounds: either love and sorrow; heroism and valour; or the depiction of reality. In foreign literature, it does not seek the truth in heroism; it rather instils a desire for power by applauding mankind’s cruelties. As regards sorrow and love, it does not know true love; rather, it injects into the soul a lust-exciting thrill. And as for the depiction of reality, it does not

528

  Civilization look on the universe as Divine art; it does not see it with its hue of the Most Merciful. Instead it approaches it from the point of view of ‘nature’ and depicts it thus; and it cannot be freed from this. For this reason, what it inculcates is love of ‘nature.’ It instils in the heart a feeling of materialism from which it cannot easily be saved. Again, that unmannerly literature, both sedative and narcotic, can provide no beneficial salve for the distress of the spirit which arises from the misguidance resulting from the above. It has found a single remedy, and that is its novels and fiction. Books with their dead living, the cinema with its animated corpses. The dead cannot bestow life! And the theatre with its reincarnations and ghosts from the vast grave known as the past; it is completely unashamed at these three sorts of its fiction. It has put a mendacious tongue in mankind’s mouth, attached a lustful eye to its face, dressed the world in a scarlet petticoat, and does not recognize sheer beauty. If it points to the sun, it puts in the reader’s mind a beautiful blonde actress. It apparently says: “Vice is bad, it is not fitting for man.” It points out its harmful consequences. But its depictions so incite vice that they make the mouth water and the reason cannot remain in control. They whet the appetite, excite desire, so the emotions no longer heed anything.44

For Nursi, the Quran is the antithesis of the literature of ‘civilization’: The literature of the Quran, however, does not stir up desire; it imparts a sense of love of the truth, a passion for sheer loveliness, an appreciation and taste for beauty, a desire for reality. And it does not deceive. It does not look at the universe from the point of view of nature; it speaks of it from the point of view of Divine art, with the colouring of the Most Merciful. It does not confuse the mind. It instils the light of knowledge of the Maker. It points out His signs in all things.45

For Nursi, then, the literature produced by ‘civilization’ walks the ‘line of philosophy’, and gives support to those currents such as naturalism and materialism which underpin European culture. He also believes that it promotes a crushing nihilism that robs man of his hope and, in time, his belief. The literature born of Europe excites a pathetic sorrow arising from the lack of friends, from being ownerless; not an elevated sorrow. For it is a woebegone sadness inspired by deaf nature and blind force. It shows the world as desolate, not in any other way. It depicts it in this way, holds the sorrowing man there, places him ownerless among strangers, leaving him without hope. Due to this feeling of consternation it has given him, he gradually sinks into misguidance; it opens up the way to atheism, from whence it is difficult to return. Perhaps he never will return.46

The Quran, Nursi writes, is no stranger to sorrow, but its approach to such emotions is clearly at odds with the pessimism and despair which lies at the heart of much modern literature. Quranic literature produces a sorrow, but it is the sorrow of love, not of orphans. It arises from separation from friends, not from the lack of them. Its view of the universe, in place of blind nature, is as conscious, merciful Divine art; it does not speak of nature. Instead of blind force, it describes wise and purposeful Divine power. The universe, therefore, does not take on the form of a desolate wasteland. Indeed, in the view of the grieving one it

529

The Qur’an Revealed  addresses, it becomes a gathering of friends. On every side mutual love and response, which cause no distress. The friendliness at every corner draws the melancholy person into society, giving him a yearning sorrow, an elevated feeling; not a dejected mournfulness. Both give rise to eagerness. But through the eagerness provoked by the foreign literature, the soul becomes excited, the desires are stimulated; its gives no joy to the spirit. The Quran’s eagerness, however, fires the spirit, gives rise to a lofty eagerness. It is for this reason that the Shari‘a of Muhammad (PBWH) wants no amusements or diversion.47

Writing long before the age of ‘television society’ and the advent of a trivialised culture in which consumers are enamoured of the technologies which stifle their ability to think critically, Nursi looks at the literature of ‘civilization’ and deems it dysfunctional to man’s true aim, which is to aspire to the knowledge, love and worship of God. Just as television, and the wider desacralized culture of which it is part, has altered the meaning of being informed by providing us with disinformation – the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads us away from knowing - , the novel as portrayed by Nursi leads man away from knowing the self – true self-knowledge being a prerequisite of God-knowledge - and leads him instead to obsessing about his ego and nurturing it, feeding its caprices and its whims. Nursi’s criticisms were levelled at the novel. Were he alive today, he would see around him a global culture in which most public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. In most societies, man’s politics, religion, sport, news, commerce and education have become, by stealth, minor branches of show business – with such subtlety that few people have noticed, or care about, the transition. The result is that man has become a being who is on the verge of entertaining himself into the oblivion of forgetfulness or, as one critic opined, of amusing himself to death.48 Nursi’s deconstruction of profane literature as exemplified by the modern novel has at its heart his dismissal of modern culture as a means of distraction; for him, ‘civilization’ is concerned not with the ennoblement of man but the aggrandizement of the evilcommanding soul, and the provision of ‘bread and circuses’ – means by which the senses are gratified and the immediate, shallow needs of the people are satisfied in order to keep them from thinking and realising their own true worth and objective as human beings. One could continue, but surely the point has been made: it was impossible for Said Nursi to approve of a ‘civilization’ in which the negative aspects outweighed the positive so decisively. For Nursi, the only way forward for man was that he embrace a civilizational form which brings true happiness and prosperity – and if not for all, then at least for the majority.

Nursi and the notion of ‘true’ civilization

Having engaged with Said Nursi’s approach to Western civilization, a question naturally occurs. If his attitude towards the civilization lauded by the West is characterised at best by ambivalence and at worst by downright excoriation, of what kind of civilization is he in favour? Can we find, in the Nursian worldview, the notion of a ‘true’ or ‘ideal’ civilization? We believe that this question can be answered both affirmatively and negatively, depending on how we understand civilization and, more importantly, how we understand the Nursian perspective on it. Of course, it would be tempting to obviate a lengthy final analysis by

530

  Civilization second-guessing his answer. After all, for a Muslim thinker, how could anything but Islamic civilization be the ‘true’ civilizational pattern for man to follow? While Nursi does indeed talk about ‘Islamic civilization’ as a salve for man’s existential malaise, he is not prescriptive in his approach and gives no practical guidelines as to how such a civilization should come about. For in the context of what he wants for man in general, and the Muslim world in particular, the revival of ‘Islamic civilization’ in the socio-political sense – at least as it was in any of its perceived ‘golden ages’ - is not on the Nursian agenda. Indeed, it may be argued that for Nursi, ‘true’ or ‘Islamic civilization’ is an ideational, transhistorical entity rather than one that has, or has had, any concrete existence in any particular place or epoch. His emphasis, as ever, is on the centrality of the Quran to man’s salvation, be it in this world or the next. For Nursi, ‘true’ civilization is one which drinks from the wellspring of Divine revelation, and one whose denizens follow the ‘line of prophethood’ in their personal lives as far as possible, and in their social relations to the extent that they are able. Nursi envisioned the realisation of this ‘true society’ in a lucid dream he had shortly after the First World War. In the dream, he was addressed by a celestial assembly and asked what the situation of the Muslim world would be like in the future, given the severity of its suffering as a result of the war. Nursi, taking on the role of ‘deputy of the present age’, answered by contrasting the path of alienation and nihilism that are the bitter fruits of atheistic ‘civilization’ with the path of the Quran and the believing society that it engenders. Present-day low civilization will change form, its system will fall apart, then Islamic civilization will emerge. Muslims will certainly be the first to enter it voluntarily. If you want a comparison, look closely at the principles of the civilization of the Shari‘a and those of present-day civilization, and consider their results. The principles of present-day civilization are negative. Its foundations and values are five negative principles. Its machinery is based on these. Its point of support is force instead of right, and the mark of force is aggression and hostility, and their result is treachery. Its goal is mean self-interest instead of virtue, and the mark of self-interest is rivalry and dispute, and their result, crime. Its law of life is conflict instead of co-operation, and the mark of conflict is this: contention and mutual repulsion, and their result, poverty. Its principle for relations between peoples is racialism, which flourishes through harming others and is nourished through devouring others. The mark of negative nationalism and racialism is ghastly clashes, disastrous collisions, and their result, annihilation. The fifth is this: its alluring service is to excite lust and the appetites of the soul and facilitate the gratification of whims, and their result is vice. The mark of lust and passion is always this: they transform man into a beast, changing his character; they deform him, perverting his humanity. If most of these civilized people were turned inside out, you would see their characters in the form of apes and foxes, snakes, bears, and swine. They appear to the imagination in their pelts and skins! Examples of its products are these. The Shari‘a, however, is the balance and equilibrium of the earth. The mercy in the Shari‘a comes from the skies of the Quran. The principles of Quranic civilization are positive. Its wheel of happiness turns on five positive principles: its point of support is truth instead of force, and the constant mark of truth is justice and balance. Security and well-being result from these, and villainy disappears. Its aim is virtue instead of self-interest, and the mark of virtue is love and mutual attraction. Happiness results

531

The Qur’an Revealed  from these, and enmity disappears. Its principle in life is co-operation instead of conflict and killing, and its mark is unity and solidarity, and the community is strengthened. Its service takes the form of guidance and direction instead of lust and passion. And the mark of guidance is progress and prosperity in a way befitting humanity; the spirit is illumined and perfected in the way it requires. The way it unifies the masses repulses racialism and negative nationalism; it establishes in place of them the bonds of religion, patriotic relations, ties of class and the brotherhood of belief. The marks of these bonds are sincere brotherhood, general well-being, defence in the case of external aggression. You have understood now the reason Islam was affronted and did not embrace civilization. Up to the present, Muslims have not entered this present civilization voluntarily; it has not suited them, for it has clamped on them fetters of bondage. Although it should be the cure for mankind, it has become poison. It has cast eighty per cent into penury and misery, while producing a false happiness for ten per cent; the remaining ten per cent it has left in an uneasy position between the two. Commercial profits have been the lot of the tyrannical minority. But true happiness is happiness for all, or at least salvation for the majority. The Quran, revealed as a mercy for mankind, accepts only civilization of this kind: happiness for all, or at least for the majority. In its present form the passions are unrestricted, caprice too is free; it is an animal freedom. The passions dominate, caprice too is despotic; they have made unessential needs essential, and banished comfort and ease. In primitive life, a man was in need of four things; civilization has put him in need of a hundred, and impoverished him. Lawful labours are insufficient to meet the cost. This has driven mankind to trickery and the unlawful. It is on this point that it corrupted morality. It bestowed wealth and glitter on society and mankind, but made the individual immoral and indigent. There are numerous witnesses to this. This malignant civilization vomited all at once the combined savagery and crimes, all the cruelty and treachery, of former centuries, and its stomach is still queasy. That the Muslim world has held back from it is both meaningful and noteworthy. It has been loath to accept it, and has acted coldly towards it. Yes, the distinguishing quality of the Divine light of the Illustrious Shari‘a is independence and self-sufficiency. It will not give up that quality, that light of guidance, so that the genius of Rome, the spirit of civilization, should dominate it. The guidance of the former cannot combine with the philosophy of the latter, nor be grafted onto it, nor follow it. The Shari‘a has nourished the compassion and dignity of belief in the spirit of Islam. The Quran of Miraculous Exposition has taken the truths of the Shari‘a in its shining hand; each is a Staff of Moses in that shining hand. In the future that sorcerer civilization will prostrate in wonderment before it. Now, note this: Ancient Rome and Greece were two geniuses; twins from a single stock. One was fanciful, the other materialist. Like oil and water, they never combined. It needed time, civilization worked at it too, and so did Christianity, but none was successful at combining them. Both preserved their independence. And now it is as though those two spirits have changed their bodies; one has become German, the other, French. They experienced a sort of metempsychosis. O my dream-brother! This is what time has shown. Like two genius oxen those twins rejected any moves to combine them; they still are not reconciled. Since they are twins, they are brothers and friends, companions in progress; but they fought and never made peace. 49

532

  Civilization Comparing Western civilization with the ideational entity known as Islamic civilization, he locates the source of the former in human artfulness or ingenuity (dahā) and that of the latter in Divine guidance (hudā). These sources, he holds, impact in very different ways on society in general and the individual in particular. One important corollary of this juxtaposition is the sheer infeasibility of achieving an admixture of the two – contrary to the aspirations of those, be it in Nursi’s time or in our own, who champion the desirability of an IslamicWestern civilizational synthesis. How could it be that with its different source, origin, and place of appearance, the light of the Quran and guidance of the Shari‘a should be reconciled with the genius of Rome, the spirit of modern civilization, and should join and combine with it? Their origins are different: guidance descended from the heavens, genius emerged from the earth. Guidance works in the heart and works the mind. Genius works in the mind and confuses the heart. Guidance illumines the spirit, making it 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 and physical being, it plunges into nature, making the soul an arable field; the animal potentialities develop and flourish; it subjugates the spirit, desiccating its seeds; it shows up satanic features in mankind. But guidance gives happiness to life, it spreads light in this life and the next; it exalts mankind. Antichrist-like genius, blind in one eye, sees only the domain of this life; it is materialist and worships this world. It turns men into beasts. Yes, deaf genius worships nature, it empowers blind force. But guidance recognizes conscious art and looks to purposeful power. Genius draws a curtain of ingratitude over the earth; guidance scatters the light of thanks. It is because of this that genius is deaf and blind, while guidance is hearing and seeing. In the view of genius, the bounties of the earth are ownerless booty; it provokes the desire to seize and steal them thanklessly, to savagely snap them off from nature. In the view of guidance, the bounties scattered over the breast of the earth and face of the universe are the fruits of mercy; it sees a gracious hand beneath every bounty, and has it kissed in gratitude.50

Artfulness – or what Nursi often calls ‘genius’ - functions in the mind and confuses the heart. It looks to the material and to the corporeal, considering the body and the evilcommanding soul, which it seeks to nurture. It develops the potentialities of the self-seeking soul or nafs while turning the spirit – the rūh.  – into a slave. In its love of this world, which is the only world it recognizes, it turns man into a demon who worships at the altar of the self and the world around it, and which, in its oblivion to the truth, draws a veil of ingratitude over the face of the earth. It sees the bounties before it as ownerless booty, which it usurps and claims as its own. Guidance, on the other hand, works in the heart and illuminates the spirit. It develops man’s potentialities and spiritual capacities and, in so doing, turns nature from a desolate wasteland into a showcase for the Divine attributes. It makes of the soul and the body willing bondsmen of God and in so doing produces happiness in this world and the next. It sees the stamp of the Divine everywhere, and the wisdom and power of God in all things. The distinction that Nursi makes here between ingenuity and guidance parallels that which he makes between the line of philosophy and the line of religion, which we discussed

533

The Qur’an Revealed  in Chapter Five. One may therefore argue that ingenuity cleaves more readily to the side of philosophy while guidance is most clearly a by-product of prophethood. That is not to say that the two cannot or may never combine, although from a Nursian perspective it may be argued that human history is, for the most part, a tale of tension between what appear at first glance to be polar opposites. Yet ingenuity, like philosophy, is not in essence negative: it is only intention that makes it so. As Nursi reminds us, whenever philosophy has served religion, mankind has enjoyed felicity beyond compare.51 Extrapolating from this, one may conclude that whenever ingenuity is employed in the light of Divine guidance, man is able to enjoy similar good fortune in his socio-economic, cultural and religious life. That ‘true civilization’ – Quranic civilization – would one day be realised once more was clearly considered possible, if not inevitable, by Nursi, although the fact that his envisioning of that society came by way of a dream is perhaps indicative of how unlikely the realisation of such a society must have seemed in the dark days following the failure of the Constitutional Revolution, the defeat of the Ottomans in the First World War and the demise of the Empire. Furthermore, Nursi holds Muslims themselves culpable for their inability to bring about the civilization adumbrated by the Quran – an inability caused by their neglect of the foundational principles of faith and their laxness in the practice of Islam. Indeed, the degeneration of Muslim society is considered by Nursi to be a direct result of Divine ‘decree and determining’, which deals out calamities in response to man’s disobedience and ingratitude. Asked in his dream to identify those actions which led to Divine chastisement of Muslim society, Nursi’s response is unequivocal. The error of the majority is always the cause of general disasters. Mankind’s misguided ideas, Nimrod-like obduracy, Pharaoh-like pride, swelled and swelled on the earth till it reached the skies. It upset too the sensitive mystery of creation. It caused to descend from the heavens the plague and storm of the last war’s quakes; it caused a heavenly blow to be visited on the infidel. That is, the calamity was the calamity of all mankind. The joint cause, inclusive of all mankind, were the misguided ideas arising from materialism, from bestial freedom, the despotism of the appetites. The reason for our share was our neglect and giving up of the pillars of Islam. For the Exalted Creator wanted one hour out of the twenty-four. He demanded of us, and for us, only one hour for the five daily prayers, and commanded this. But out of laziness we gave them up, neglected them due to heedlessness. So we received the following punishment: He made us perform prayers of a sort these last five years by constant twenty-four hour drill and hardship, being driven on and made to strive. He also wanted of us one month’s fasting a year, but we pitied ourselves, so in atonement He compelled us to fast for five years. As zakat, He wanted either a fortieth or a tenth of the property He had given us, but out of stinginess we did wrong: we mixed the illicit with our property, and did not give it voluntarily. So He had our accumulated zakat taken from us, and saved us from what was unlawful. The deed fitted the punishment. The punishment fitted the deed.52

Calamity, however, Nursi points out, can be turned to good account so long as it is recognised as a Divine trial and means for repentance. If Muslims have lost the benefits of ‘true civilization’ through their negligence, it is down to them to retrieve it through the renewal of faith.

534

  Civilization And as we see from the central objective of the Risale-i Nur, which was to re-establish and strengthen faith, in Said Nursi’s view, for man to be truly ‘civilized’, he must first make himself truly human. To be truly human is to live in the manner prescribed by the Quran, namely to aspire to reflect the attributes of God and become His vicegerent, His khalifa. This means that he must endeavor to establish for himself not an Islamic state, but an Islamic state of mind. If, in secular shorthand, ‘civilization’ is the highest thing towards which man as a social being can aspire, Nursi redefines the term to make it truly meaningful for limited, impotent man, giving it the ability to ‘confront the awesome silence of the grave’ in a way that no other civilization is able.

535

Chapter Seventeen Politics Introduction

“I take refuge in God,” Said Nursi once said famously, “from Satan and from politics.” This enigmatic utterance is often cited as incontrovertible evidence of Nursi’s uncompromising aversion to all things political, signalling the apoliticism that is seen by many as one of the defining characteristics of the movement which grew up around his teachings in the Risale-i Nur. Yet as even the most cursory glances at his biography will reveal, Nursi was no stranger to engagement with politics and political issues; indeed, as we shall see, the way he himself divided his life into three ideational and developmental stages – namely the ‘Old Said’, the ‘New Said’ and the ‘Third Said’ – was to a certain extent informed by the different approaches that he adopted towards politics throughout his life. Why, then, the decision to take refuge in God? Which aspect of politics and political life was so abhorrent to Nursi that, by combining it with Satan to form what almost amounts to a concept pair, he was moved to deem it on a par with the demonic? The definition of the word ‘politics’ is notoriously vague and therefore highly contested. It has been argued that as a general concept, politics boils down to the techniques employed in directing or administering states or other political units; however, this is probably too broad a definition for our present task, which is to identify precisely the kind of activity or set of behaviours – seemingly on the same level as the Devil as far as its inherent perniciousness is concerned - from which Nursi declared that he had taken refuge. There are two other relatively broad but less unwieldy definitions which may serve our purpose here. The first, to quote Edward Banfield, focuses on ‘actors who are oriented towards the attainment of ends.’ 1 When those actors pursue ends or objectives that conflict, an ‘issue’ comes into being. Politics is the technique through which that issue is either settled or worsened, be it by negotiation, argumentation, discussion, diplomacy, persuasion or, in extreme but all too familiar cases, the application of brute force.2 A shorter, but not dissimilar, definition of politics is that it is ‘the struggle among actors pursuing conflicting desires on public issues.’ 3 The main difference is that the first identifies

537

The Qur’an Revealed  politics as technique while the second focuses on politics as struggle. Another difference is that the first does not actually spell out which kind of issues are political, while the second definition specifies that those issues must be ‘public’. Again, what constitutes a ‘public’ issue is also open to serious question, although it is safe to say that whatever the term public actually covers, it almost certainly includes issues which pertain to ‘group policy, group organisation, group leadership, or the conduct or regulation of intergroup relationships’. 4 Of course, this understanding does not exhaust the definitional possibilities which attend the word ‘politics’, and no doubt raises as many questions as it purports to answer. For example, if politics is to do with how groups are organised, led and regulated, is it solely to be found on a macro level – on the level of society as a whole – or can it be found in all groups, even those which are small and informal? And if it can, what is the demarcation line – if any - between politics and other social and economic activities? Are wars and revolutions representative of politics in extremis, or do they mark the abject failure of politics as technique? Is the bargaining which goes on in a factory between owner and workers over pay and conditions a political act? And taking it down to the micro-level, does the discussion between man and wife over whose turn it is to cook count as politics?5 Indeed, is it only humans who ‘do’ politics? Zoological studies have shown that some animal communities exhibit political traits similar to those found among humans. For example, a study of power and sex among certain groups of primates led to the definition of chimpanzee politics as ‘social manipulation to secure and maintain influential positions’ 6 – a definition which is not that different from the description given of human politics as ‘the study of influence and the influential’.7 To our two broad definitions of politics given at the outset of this introduction, we can now add the two broad approaches to the conceptualization of politics which seem to dominate popular thinking. The first holds that politics is an activity or concatenation of activities which takes place only in certain kinds of societies and in certain kinds of institutional settings or processes within those societies.8 The second is what is known as the ‘processual’ approach, which has it that politics is something that we all do: it has existed since the dawn of mankind and is a necessary feature of all societies and social groups, regardless of how big or small they are, or how formal or informal. In short, politics is as much about the micro as it is about the macro. But in all of these approaches to the definition and popular conceptualisation of politics, there are shared concerns which suggest that there is a common thread which unites them. This common thread is the perception that, at bottom, politics is about power and the techniques available for its establishment, distribution and control.9 Having established a rough working definition of politics, we can now try to determine what it was about the political situation of his time that produced feelings of distaste in Nursi so profound that he withdrew from politics for over three decades. But before we look at the reasons for his withdrawal, it is important to understand that Nursi’s core political ideals were nothing less than a reflection of the political ideals of the Quran itself. A brief excursus into Quranic political discourse is thus needed here.

538

  Politics

The Quran and the political There can be no doubt that many Muslims, both today and in centuries gone by, have seen the Quran as having a distinctly political ethos, not least because of its inclusion of a number of concepts – e.g. shurā (consultation) and the bay‘a, or oath of allegiance given to the Prophet10 – which are considered to be part of the structural underpinning of the Islamic polity that is, they believe, one of the central objectives of the revelation, and the blueprint for which can be found in the caliphate of the four ‘rightly-guided’ successors to the Prophet. Yet as a political unit responsible for the legislation of a socio-political order and tasked with the administration of a vast swathe of what is now the modern Middle East, the Muslim state as an instrument of governance emerged not as a result of Quranic ordinances but as a consequence of the needs of the early community and the consensus of its elite. Indeed, had the political message of the Quran been as clear as the Islamist theoreticians claim, surely there would not have been as much debate and discussion as there has been with regard to precisely what it is and how it should be implemented. In fact, there is no consensus that the Quran even carries with it a political message as such, at least in the sense that we understand the term today. If we bear in mind the definitional frame of reference outlined above, as far as the general concept is concerned, there is little, if anything, in the Quran that one could construe as being overtly political, the claims of contemporary Islamist ideologues notwithstanding. It neither advocates a particular governmental system nor delineates procedures for the election and dismissal of leaders. The Quran does not discuss anything that could be even remotely construed as pertaining to how states or other political units are to be administered or controlled. And one would be hard pressed to find anything in the revelation which could be understood without considerable interpretative creativity as defining the nature and parameters of temporal power and the techniques available for its establishment, distribution and control. Yet to claim that the Quran is apolitical would be to mislead. For while the revelation is not concerned with power, governance and control on the macro or ‘arena’ level, on the micro level it addresses man and how he is to regulate his own life if he is to gain salvation. In this sense, then, it is fair to say that the Quran is about power, control and restriction: the power that man attributes to God and which he invokes in order to effect self-control and a measure of restriction on the unlimited freedoms demanded by the ‘evil-commanding soul’ (al-nafs al-ammāra). Furthermore, the revelation contains numerous ethical precepts which concern not only the spiritual amelioration of the individual but the facilitation of interpersonal relations that are imbued with the kind of mutual respect that stem from a sense of shared worshipfulness. Arguably, then, the Quran is concerned with the creation not of an Islamic state but of an Islamic state of mind. The Risale-i Nur, which, its author claims, is a mirror held up to the Quran, is similarly devoid of anything construable as a political ethos in the sense of the term as defined at the outset of this chapter: there are no directives on governance, no analysis of Muslim political jurisprudence and, most importantly, no blueprint for the kind of ideal Islamic polity that is clearly a desideratum for the Islamist. Then there is Nursi’s famous decision to take refuge in God ‘from Satan and politics’ – a disengagement which gave rise to the general perception

539

The Qur’an Revealed  of him as a quietistic, apolitical scholar with little or no interest in issues of governance or affairs of state.11 Yet this is a somewhat simplistic view of Nursi. Firstly, as the ‘Old Said’, Nursi did engage with political life. Secondly, even though he later turned his back on politics in the generally understood sense of the term, Nursi remained political in the same way that the Quran is political, for he too advocated the creation not of an Islamic polity but of a society that is imbued with the ethico-moral precepts of the Quran, and the formation of which is bottom-up rather than top-down. For Nursi, the virtuous society begins with individuals and their adherence to the tenets of the faith: if politics is about regulating and controlling, it is the self-regulation and self-control which come from acknowledgement of one’s status as servant of God which are key, and not the regulation and control of society through legislation and imposition of laws from above. Since the compartmentalization of Nursi’s life into three distinct periods is in part a reflection of the changing nature of his approach to politics and political engagement, the rest of this chapter is arranged chronologically according to those divisions.

The ‘Old Said’

During his ‘Old Said’ period, which covered roughly the first 45 years of his life, Nursi’s involvement in the political life of the waning Ottoman empire was not inconsiderable, particularly in the run-up to, and the aftermath of, the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. What Nursi describes as his own particular political ‘awakening’ happened at an early age: Sixteen years before the [Constitutional] Revolution [of 1908], I encountered in the region of Mardin a person who guided me to the truth; he showed me the just and equitable way in politics. Also at that time, I was awakened by Namik Kemal’s Dream.12

One of the leading lights of the Young Ottomans, poet and social reformer Namık Kemal wrote Rüya (The Dream) as an expression of his desire for a society free from despotism, where enlightened individuals might seek progress and prosperity for the good of the homeland (wat. an).13 Kemal’s fairytale depiction of a land where tyranny no longer reigns supreme, where sovereignty lies in the hands of its educated citizens, and where the rights of all members of the community are respected and guaranteed by law, must have had an incredible impact on the teenage Nursi, who described himself at the outbreak of the First World War as ‘someone who for twenty years has pursued freedom, even in his dreams, and who has abandoned everything because of that burning aspiration.’ 14 It was as a youth of no more than sixteen, then, that Nursi was awakened to the struggle for freedom and a constitutional, parliamentary government that Young Ottomans like Namık Kemal had been waging since their formation in 1865. It is also clear that he was influenced by the ideas of Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (d. 1897), for whom constitutional government and the concomitant restraint on absolutism were key to his agenda for the amelioration of Muslim society and his endeavour to stem the tide of Western political and cultural colonialism that was sweeping steadily across the Muslim world.

540

  Politics It was during his trip to Istanbul in 1907, made specifically in order to secure support for his educational reform project in Eastern Anatolia, that Nursi was caught up in the current of constitutionalism then sweeping the country. Nursi openly professed his support for ‘freedom and constitutionalism’, both of which he deemed consonant with Quranic principles, and he made a case for both of these ideals in numerous speeches and newspaper articles. Nursi, like Afghānī and others like him, felt that constitutionalism could provide a basis for the progress and unity of the Muslim world. Just days after the Young Turk Revolution of July 3rd 1908, Nursi gave his first public speech. Entitled Address to Freedom, it explained constitutionalism and how it should be seen. This speech marked the beginning of nine months of intensive political activity, with Nursi promulgating the virtues of constitutional government, social justice and freedom among the teachers and students of the religious seminaries and also among his fellow Kurds in the Eastern provinces. In all of the newspaper articles that he wrote and the lectures that he gave, his message was unchanging: the principles of constitutionalism, he argued, which were in perfect accord with the precepts of the Quran, had to be taken on board if the Empire – and, by extension, Muslim civilization – were to be saved. The constitution, which is in accordance with the shari’a, is the introduction to the sovereignty of the nation and invites us to enter like the treasury-guard of paradise. O my oppressed compatriots! Let us go and enter!15

Nursi believed that the revolution and its reforms would mark the beginning of a new era for the Ottoman nation, which had suffered under the yoke of despotism for far too long. The new freedoms afforded by constitutional rule would, he said, provide the oppressed nation “with progress a thousand times greater than in former times.”16 However, Nursi stressed time and time again that constitutionalism and democracy would be of benefit only if they were informed by the spirit of religion and the precepts of the Quran. For him, politics was there to serve religion, and not the other way round. And to his mind, this was perfectly rational, given what he believed was the eternal nature of the shari’a: not only did it promote equality, justice and true freedom, its dynamism was such that it was also able to expand in order to accommodate human progress and development. Indeed, one of the reasons that the Muslim world was in such an infelicitous predicament, Nursi argued, was its failure to observe the precepts of Islam correctly – a serious shortcoming for which, in his opinion, the clerical class or ulamā were to a large extent culpable. Nursi’s brief burst of political activity came to an abrupt end with the so-called ‘Thirty-First of March Incident’ in 1909, an army revolt directed against the oppressive and arbitrary government of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which, with the assistance of the Young Turks, had been transformed from a revolutionary movement into a political party, and had been ruling for all of nine months when the army mutinied. Nursi, who knew and had worked with members of the CUP, was arrested in the ensuing crackdown, tried by court martial but eventually acquitted.17 Light still remains to be shed on the exact nature and extent of Nursi’s involvement with the CUP. What is clear, however, is his opposition to the actions and behaviours of some of its members. When asked why he had chosen to part company with the CUP after having championed it so enthusiastically, he said:

541

The Qur’an Revealed  I did not part from it; it was from some of its members that I parted. I am still in agreement with people like Niyazi Bey and Enver Bey, but some of them parted from us. They strayed from the path and headed for the swamp.18

The issue on which he continued to agree with the CUP was the need for social unity, which was crucial for the survival of the Empire. Unity, however, could not obtain without the allimportant component of education. Unity cannot occur through ignorance. Unity is the fusion of ideas, and the fusion of ideas occurs through the electric rays of knowledge.19

For Nursi, educational reform was key not only to individual enlightenment but also to the salvation of the Empire and, by extension, the people’s conceptualisation of religion itself. For one of the reasons that Nursi became disenchanted with some of the movers and shakers of the Second Constitutional movement was the perception on their part that it was Islam itself which was responsible for holding the nation back from progress and prosperity. Nursi believed that this was simply not the case, and argued that it was the fault not of Islam but of those who claimed to represent and teach it in a madrasa system that had become ossified and was no longer able to meet the challenges of a changing age. Reform of the traditional religious schools and their curricula was thus vital, Nursi believed, if the needs of the masses were to be met and the criticisms of the detractors of religion were to be answered. Convinced that the only solution was to reform the educational system by creating new institutions in which the traditional scriptural and intellectual disciplines of Muslim learning were taught alongside the natural sciences, Nursi drew up plans for the establishment of a university, based in the Eastern provinces, which would embody his vision. The advent of the First World War put paid to his plans, however, and the university never came to fruition. At the end of World War I, Nursi continued to be politically active, supporting in his writings the national independence effort in Anatolia and, significantly, opposing the Kurdish-Armenian agreement regarding the creation of an autonomous Kurdistan – a stance which, given his own Kurdish origins, speaks volumes about his non-partisan approach.

The ‘New Said’

The birth of the Turkish Republic in the early Twenties also saw the birth of the ‘New Said’ and the emergence of a thinker whose primary objective was now to throw light on the truths of Islam by holding up a scholarly mirror to the Quran. To this end, Nursi at this juncture in his life effectively withdrew from public and political life. Following the defeat of the Ottomans in the First World War, in which Nursi served and was taken prisoner-of-war, and the occupation of Istanbul and other parts of Turkey by foreign forces, and having witnessed the internal struggles which were taking place at court, Nursi was already showing signs of dissatisfaction with public life in general and his own active involvement in particular. However, it was not until he was invited by Mustafa Kemal himself to take part in the construction of the new Republic that Nursi’s disenchantment became virtually all-

542

  Politics consuming. Summoned to Ankara in the autumn of 1922, Nursi was horrified to see the extent to which secularism and aggressive Westernization was undergirding the political agenda of the elite in charge of the new regime. Nursi spent approximately eight months in Ankara, during which he learned much about the objectives of the architects of the new Republic, many of whom – much to Nursi’s dismay – were apathetic or even hostile to religion and religious faith. He came to understand that for Mustafa Kemal, the revival of Turkish fortunes depended on its ability to modernize, and that, by default, modernization meant Westernization. This would be possible only through a thorough and robust secularization of Turkish society, which in turn would mean the effacement of Islam – a symbol of backwardness in the eyes of the secular elite – from public life. And so despite being welcomed fulsomely by the National Assembly and being offered various positions by Mustafa Kemal, Nursi would have nothing to do with the new regime, responding to Ataturk’s approaches by saying: “The New Said wants to work for the next world and cannot work with you. But he won’t interfere with you either.” 20 And work for the next world he did, preferring seclusion and the power of the pen over political involvement and the power of what he believed were pernicious ideologies that threatened the spiritual well-being of Muslim umma. Nursi would not step foot into the political arena for another thirty years, during which he dedicated his life to expounding the truths of the Quran and attempting to strengthen the religious feelings and Muslim identity of the people. Nursi’s trip to Ankara is arguably the key to understanding why he moved from political activist to virtual political recluse, almost literally overnight. What Nursi witnessed in the circles of power which formed after the creation of the Turkish Republic was, for him, emblematic of the malaise which was gripping mankind in general at this juncture of history. Nursi believed that the materialism of the modern world, now engulfing the heartlands of Islam, had entranced the Muslim community to the extent that the foundational values of religion were in danger of being consigned to oblivion. Wastefulness, greed, rapacious competition for status and power, and the insidious encroachment of secularism and other alien ideologies had captured the imagination of the misguided, Nursi believed, making the pursuit of the self and its apparent pleasures far more appealing than the pursuit of belief and its lasting felicity. One of the symptoms of the malaise, Nursi believed, was the meaningless curiosity which people now had about politics and the ‘chess-games’ of political life. His own aloofness from politics was such that for years he refused to read newspapers or listen to reports about political affairs or world events; even the Second World War, which he believed was a punishment for man’s intransigence against truth, was not worth a minute of his time or attention. Although at this time, the truths of belief should come first and other things remain in second, third and fourth place, and serving them through the Risale-i Nur should be the prime duty and point of curiosity and main aim, the state of the world has stimulated to a high degree the veins of worldly life, and especially of social life and political life, and more than anything of partisanship in regard to the [Second] World War, which is a manifestation of divine wrath in punishment for the vice and misguidance of civilization; this inauspicious age has injected those harmful, passing desires into the very centre of the heart, even as the diamonds of the truths of belief... 21

543

The Qur’an Revealed  This was a ‘strange age’, he said, with ‘strange sicknesses’ that only the Risale-i Nur as a doorway to the ‘healing remedies of the Quran’ would be able to combat. And it was on the writing of the Risale-i Nur and the dissemination of its truths that he was to concentrate his efforts now that the ‘Old Said’ had abandoned his somewhat naïve political idealism and matured into the ‘New Said’, whose more mature and realistic view of society gave priority to the strengthening of belief over all other considerations. This is not to say, however, that Nursi no longer considered the amelioration of Muslim society to be a priority. What had changed was his approach, cognizant as he now was that a ‘top-down’ approach to reform – political ‘quick-fixism’, as it were – might produce some immediate effects, but would not yield results that were either lasting or conducive to man’s true psycho-spiritual or socio-political wellbeing. The best way he could serve the people, he maintained, would be through disseminating the truths of belief so that the people might strengthen their belief and save themselves. The only alternative would be for him to become involved in politics, which for him was unthinkable. It is not that he was opposed to politics in the abstract. What Nursi opposed was the cut-throat world of utilitarian power politics which had spread its tentacles everywhere, feeding on partisanship, enmity and personal gain, seeing all things – religion included – as merely means to an end. What Nursi opposed was politics as a discourse of power, and of profane power at that. The New Said avoids [politics] so vehemently in order to serve belief and the Quran, which is of the greatest importance and is the greatest necessity and most pure and most right, and so as not to sacrifice unnecessarily for one or two doubtful years of worldly life his working for and winning more than millions of years of eternal life. For he says: I am getting old and I do not know how much longer I shall live, so the most important question for me must be to work for eternal life. The prime means of gaining eternal life and the key to everlasting happiness is belief, so one has to work for that. But since I am obliged by the sharī‘a to serve people in respect of learning so that they may profit also, I want to perform such a duty. However, such service will either concern social and worldly life, which I cannot do, and also in stormy times it is not possible to perform such service soundly. Therefore, I left aside that aspect and chose the aspect of service to belief, which is the most important, the most necessary, and the soundest. But if you ask why service to the Quran and belief prohibit me, I would say this: since the truths of belief and the Quran are all like diamonds, if I were polluted by politics, the ordinary people who are easily deceived would wonder about those diamonds I was holding and say: “Aren’t they for political propaganda to attract more supporters?” They might regard the diamonds as bits of common glass. Then, by being involved with politics, I would be wronging those diamonds and depreciating them.22

And so, true to the response he had given to Ataturk, he worked for the next world and did not interfere with the movers and shakers of political life. In fact, the only involvement he had with politics in the next thirty years came as a result of the regime’s insistence on interfering with him : Nursi lived much of this period of his life under government surveillance, was arrested on a number of occasions on trumped up charges and spent protracted periods in prison or in exile under house arrest. Following the so-called ‘Shaykh

544

  Politics Saīd’ revolt in 1925,23 Nursi was arrested and sent into exile in Burdur and later kept under close surveillance in the village of Barla, in the province of Isparta, until 1934; a year later he was taken to Eskișehir, where he was imprisoned. In 1936 he was sent to Kastamonu, where he was again held under police surveillance, this time for seven years. In 1943 he was taken to Ankara and from there to Denizli, where he was tried along with a number of students. Following his acquittal he was confined once more to compulsory residence in Emirdagˇ . In 1948 he was tried again and sentenced to twenty months’ imprisonment, securing his release under the terms of the general amnesty of 1950. Two years later he was tried for the last time in Istanbul, and was again acquitted. One of the first accusations leveled against Nursi, and which saw him incarcerated for months in appalling conditions, was that he opposed republicanism and its programme of secularization. Nursi later described his response to this charge; like all of his defense speeches, it is a finely nuanced one: They asked me there: “What do you think about the Republic?” I replied: “As my biography which you have in your hands proves, I was a religious republican before any of you, with the exception of the Chairman of the Court, was born. A summary is this: like now, I was living at that time in seclusion in a remote tomb. They used to bring me soup, and I would give breadcrumbs to the ants. I used to eat my bread having dipped it in the soup. They asked me about it and I told them: the ant and bee nations are republicans. I give the breadcrumbs to the ants out of respect for their republicanism.” Then they said to me: “You are opposing the righteous early generations of Islam.” I told them in reply: “The four Rightly-Guided Caliphs were Caliphs and they were also like presidents of the Republic. But theirs was not an empty name and title: they were heads of a religious republic which bore the meaning of true justice and freedom in accordance with the precepts of Islam.” 24

That Nursi declared himself in court to be a religious republican of old leaves us in no doubt as to the contempt in which he held the foundational principles of the new Republic, inimical as they were to the spirit and principles of Islam. Yet his obvious distaste for the ideals of Mustafa Kemal and the new Republic never led to any call for rebellion on his part, and at no time during his life did the notion of advocating the establishment of a theocratic state or hierocratic government ever enter his head. Any contempt that he had for the Kemalist project was always sublimated into what he termed ‘positive action’, which consisted largely of opposing the state simply by preaching the truths of religion. On the issue of secularism, he was no less ambivalent, pointing out that if secularism meant the non-interference of government in the affairs of the religious, it was something that he might live with quite easily. However, if secularism meant that the religious were to be persecuted on account of their faith, he disabused his detractors of the notion that he would be in any way intimidated by the state’s attempts to silence him. I told them: Mr. Prosecutor and Members of the Court! You are accusing me of holding an idea opposite to that which I have held for fifty years. If you ask me about the secular republic, what I understand by it is that ‘secular’ (laϊc) means to be impartial; that is, a government which, in accordance with the principle of freedom of conscience, does not interfere with the religiously-minded and pious, the same as it does not interfere with

545

The Qur’an Revealed  the irreligious and dissipated. I withdrew from political and social life twenty-five years ago, and what form the Government of the Republic has taken, I do not know. If, God forbid, it has assumed a fearsome form whereby, on account of irreligion, it passes and accepts laws to incriminate those who work for their belief and lives in the hereafter, then I announce to you fearlessly and warn you that if I had a thousand lives, I would be ready to sacrifice all of them for belief and life in the hereafter. Do whatever you will! My last word is For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs! In response to your wrongfully condemning me to capital punishment or hard labour, I say: as the Risale-i Nur has discovered and shown with absolute certainty, I am not being executed; I am being discharged and departing for the world of light and happiness. As for you, our covert enemies, wretches who oppress us on account of misguidance! Since I know you are condemned to eternal extinction and everlasting solitary confinement, and I have seen this, I have taken my revenge on you totally, and am ready to surrender up my spirit with a perfectly easy mind! 25

Nursi was typically phlegmatic about the oppression he suffered at the hands of ‘the worldly.’ While he considered himself to have been treated with gross injustice by the authorities, he attributed his situation ultimately to Divine Determining, with regard to which he felt he was in no position to complain. Indeed, he called his prison the ‘school of Joseph’ – an allusion to the imprisonment of Joseph (Yūsuf ) the Prophet, who had turned his incarceration at the hands of the wife of Potiphar into an opportunity to teach his fellow prisoners the truths of belief and guide them towards their own salvation. That Nursi was able – albeit often under tortuous circumstances - to continue writing and teaching in prison, and during his various spells of exile and house arrest, is testament to his indomitable spirit and sense of direction and commitment. A letter written to his students – ‘My dear brothers’ - during his eight-year exile in Barla throws light on his attitude not only to the oppressive circumstances in which he found himself, but also to politics and political life in general. You frequently ask about my situation and how I am, and why I have not applied for my release papers, and concerning my indifference towards politics and the state of the world. Since you have repeated these questions on numerous occasions, and also ask me them in meaning if not in fact, I am compelled to reply to them not as the New Said, but in the language of the Old Said. You ask me how I am, and whether I am comfortable. My reply is this: I offer a hundred thousand thanks to the Most Merciful of the Merciful that He has transformed the various wrongs ‘the worldly’ perpetrate against me into various forms of mercy. It is like this: having given up politics and withdrawn from the world, I was living in a mountain cave and thinking of the hereafter when ‘the worldly’ wrongfully plucked me from it and sent me into exile. The All-Compassionate and Wise Creator turned the exile into mercy; He transformed the solitude on the mountain, which was unsafe and exposed to factors that would harm sincerity, into a retreat in the safe and sincere mountains of Barla. While a prisoner-of-war in Russia I formed the intention to withdraw into a cave towards the end of my life and offered supplications for that purpose. The Most Merciful of the Merciful made Barla the cave and bestowed the benefits of a cave, but He did not burden the difficulties and troubles of a cave on my

546

  Politics weak being. Only, in Barla there were two or three people who were suspicious, and due to their groundless fears I suffered torments. It was as though those friends were thinking of my comfort, but due to their suspicions, they caused harm both to my heart and to the service of the Quran.26

As a prisoner-of-war in Russia, Nursi says, he had prayed that he would be allowed to ‘withdraw into a cave’ towards the end of his life; his exile in Barla, he writes, was that metaphorical cave. Had he not withdrawn from political life and been brought there, he implies, the Risale-i Nur, much of which was written in Barla, might never have seen the light of day. The cause of his being exiled, namely the oppression of the authorities was one thing; the reason for his exile, namely the writing of the Risale, was another. Moreover, the fact that other exiles were given their release papers while his were withheld from him served as further proof for Nursi that his duty was not yet over. Moreover, although ‘the worldly’ gave the document in question to all the exiles, and released the criminals from prison and offered them an amnesty, they wrongfully did not give it to me. In order to further employ me in the service of the Quran and make me write to a greater extent the lights of the Quran called the Words, my Compassionate Sustainer left me in untroubled manner in this exile and transformed it into a great instance of compassion. In addition, although ‘the worldly’ left all the influential and powerful leaders and shaykhs who could interfere in their world in the towns and cities and permitted them to meet with their relatives and everyone, they wrongfully isolated me and sent me to a village. With one or two exceptions they gave permission to none of my relatives and fellow-countrymen to visit me. My All-Compassionate Creator transformed that isolation into a vast mercy for me. It left my mind clear and was the means of my receiving the effulgence of the All-Wise Quran as it is, free of all malice and ill-will.27

When asked by his students why he did not apply for his release papers, Nursi responds by saying that since Divine Determining (qadar) is the ultimate cause of his incarceration, what point is there in asking ‘the worldly’ for anything? I have been sentenced by Divine Determining in this matter, not by ‘the worldly.’ My application is to Divine Determining. Whenever it gives permission, whenever it halts my sustenance here, then I shall go. The reality of this is as follows: there are two causes of everything that befalls one, one apparent and the other, real. ‘The worldly’ are the apparent cause; they brought me here. As for Divine Determining, that was the true cause; it sentenced me to this isolation. The apparent cause acted wrongfully, whereas the true cause acted with justice. The apparent one thought like this: “This man serves learning and religion excessively; he may interfere in our world.” Because of this possibility, they exiled me and perpetrated a threefold wrong. Divine Determining saw that I could not truly serve religion and learning with sincerity, so it sentenced me to this exile. It transformed their compounded tyranny into a multiple mercy. Since in my exile Divine Determining is dominant and it is just, I have recourse to it. For sure, the apparent cause has certain pretexts and things; that means it is meaningless to make application to them. If they possessed some right or some powerful cause, then application could have been made to them also.28

547

The Qur’an Revealed  Here, Nursi makes a distinction between the role of apparent and real causes in a single act, thus offering yet another lesson in the dynamics of Divine Determining. The apparent cause of his being sent into exile was the unjust decision of the authorities, who believed that Nursi’s religious teachings were a threat to the state. The real cause of his being exiled, however, was Divine Determining, which always acts in accordance with Divine justice. Nursi was sent into exile by Divine Determining in order that he might increase his service to religion – an objective totally at odds with that of the state authorities who had sentenced him in the first place. The tyranny of the authorities is, as far as their intentions are concerned, true tyranny, but insofar as it was the apparent cause for a righteous objective, for Nursi it was tyranny transformed into opportunity and, by extension, mercy. Why, then, he asks, if Divine Determining had decreed that he be given this opportunity, would he apply to the authorities in order for them to remove it? However, it is not merely his acknowledgment of the workings of Divine Determining that is the reason for his unwillingness to have recourse to his oppressors. Although I have completely given up their world - may it be their downfall! - and their politics - may it rebound on them!- since the pretexts and suspicions they think up are of course baseless, I do not want to imbue their suspicions with reality by applying to them. If I had an appetite to meddle in world politics, the reins of which are in the hands of Westerners, it would not have remained thus secret for eight hours let alone eight years; it would have leaked out and shown itself. Whereas for eight years I have felt no desire to read a single newspaper, and I have not read one. For four years I have been here under surveillance, and there has not been the slightest sign of my meddling in politics. That is to say, service of the All-Wise Quran is superior to all politics so that it does not allow one to lower oneself to world politics, which consists mostly of falsehood. The second reason for my not applying is this: to claim a right before those who suppose wrong to be right, is a sort of wrong. I do not want to perpetrate such a wrong.29

Nursi’s insistence on biding his time and waiting until authorities higher than ‘the worldly’ decreed his release stemmed from his shrewd awareness that to appeal to those who had wronged him would in a sense appear to them to be an admission of guilt on his part. Furthermore, their suspicion that he was really a ‘politician in cleric’s clothing’ would have been confirmed, and this was something that Nursi was unwilling to countenance. The fact that he had not touched a single newspaper during the whole of his eight-year exile, or shown the slightest inclination towards anything remotely political, was ample proof that their suspicions were baseless, he said, and he did not wish to give them any ammunition to prop up their baseless claims by going to them cap in hand. Furthermore, he says, to appeal to a tyrant is, in a sense, a form of tyranny in itself. Nursi’s self-imposed embargo on newspapers and his obvious disinterest in world affairs inform another set of questions posed by his students. Why, they asked, was Nursi so indifferent towards world politics? Why, despite the rapidly changing events occurring across the world, did his attitude stay the same? Did this signal acceptance on his part or did it betoken fear? What was his reason for remaining aloof from politics? His answer is typically forthright:

548

  Politics Service of the All-Wise Quran severely prohibited me from the world of politics. It even made me forget about it. For the whole story of my life testifies that fear has never taken me by the hand and prevented me taking the way I considered to be right, nor can it. And why should I be frightened? I have no connection with the world apart from the appointed hour. I have no family and children to think of. It is not wanting to preserve worldly glory and renown which consists of hypocritical, undeserved fame, may God bless those who help in destroying it. There only remains the appointed hour and that is in the hands of the All-Glorious Creator. Who has the power to interfere with it before the time of its coming? Anyway we are among those who prefer honourable death to degradation in life. Someone resembling the Old Said spoke the following lines: “We are those for whom there is no middle way; for us is either the place of honour among the people, or the grave.” Indeed, service of the Quran prevents me from thinking of socio-political life. It is like this: human life is a journey. I saw at this time through the light of the Quran that the way has entered a swamp. The caravan of mankind is stumbling forward in stinking and filthy mud. Part of it is travelling a safe way. Part of it has found certain means to save itself as far as is possible from the muddy swamp. The great majority are travelling in darkness in the stinking, filthy, muddy swamp. Twenty per cent suppose the filthy mud to be musk and ambergris because they are drunk, and are smearing it over their faces and eyes... they stumble on till they drown in it. However, eighty per cent understand it is a swamp and realize it is stinking and filthy, but they are bewildered and cannot see the safe way... Thus there are two solutions for these: the first is to bring the drunken twenty per cent to their senses with a club; the second is to point out the safe way to the bewildered by showing them a light. I look and see that eighty people are brandishing clubs at the twenty, while the light is not shown truly to the unhappy and bewildered eighty. And even if it is shown, since those showing it have both the club and the light in one hand, it does not inspire confidence. The bewildered man anxiously wonders: “Does he want to attract me with the light then hit me with the club?” And sometimes when, due to some defect, the club is broken, the light flies away too or else is extinguished.30

The ‘filthy, muddy swamp’, Nursi says, is the dissolute life of modern man, which spawns heedlessness and misguidance. The ‘drunkards’ are those obstinate people who take delight in being misguided, together with those who detest misguidance but are trapped in it: they yearn to be saved but cannot find a way out. As for the ‘clubs’, they are the various political currents and movements. The ‘light’ is, as one might expect, the light of the truths of the Quran. What Nursi realised was that one cannot wield a club in one hand and a light in the other and expect to be taken seriously. Now light cannot be disputed, nor can enmity be held towards it. No one can detest it apart from Satan the Accursed. And so, in order to hold in my hand the light of the Quran, I said, “I seek refuge with God from Satan and from politics,” and, throwing away the club of politics, embraced the light with both hands. I saw that in the political currents, there are lovers of those lights in both the opposition and the supporters. It is necessary that no side and no group casts aspersions on or holds back from the lights of the Quran which are shown, or from the teachings of the Quran, which are far superior

549

The Qur’an Revealed  to all political currents and partisanship and are exempt from and free of all their biased considerations. Unless they be the satans in human form or animals in human dress, who imagine irreligion and atheism to be politics and support them... All praise be to God, because I withdrew from politics, I did not reduce the diamond-like truths of the Quran to the value of fragments of glass amid accusations of political propaganda. Indeed, the diamonds increase their value in the view of every group in brilliant fashion.31

His decision to renounce political life and discard the ‘club of politics’, made following his traumatic visit to Ankara in 1923, was one that he was to hold to until the end of his life. Nevertheless, his obvious distance from politics did not prevent accusations being levelled against him of using the Risale and its community for the sake of political ends. Following his exile in Barla, Nursi would fall foul of the state authorities time and time again, the general charge being that he was he was making a tool of religion with the idea of political reaction, and with the intention of undertaking an enterprise which might disturb public order. Nursi’s responses to these accusations were respectful but always robust: God forbid a hundred thousand times that the sciences of belief with which we are occupied should be a tool for anything apart from divine pleasure! For sure, just as the sun cannot be a satellite of the moon and follow it, so belief in God, which is the luminous, sacred key to eternal happiness and a sun of the life of the hereafter, cannot be the tool of social life. There is no matter in the universe more important than the mystery of belief, the greatest question and greatest riddle of the world’s creation, so that belief may be made the tool of it. Judges of the Court! If this tortuous imprisonment of mine concerned only myself and my life in this world, you can be sure that I would remain silent like I have these last ten years. But since it concerns the eternal life of many others, and the Risale-i Nur, which reveals and explains the mighty talisman of creation, if I had a hundred heads and each day one were to be cut off, I would not give up this mighty mystery. Even if I am delivered from your hands, I cannot be saved from the clutches of the appointed hour. I am old and at the door of the grave. So consider only this mystery of belief concerning the appointed hour and the grave, which will come to everyone, one of the hundreds of matters the Risale-i Nur discloses. Can all of the weightiest political questions of the world loom larger than death for someone who is certain of death, so that he can make it the tool of those questions? For the time of its coming is not known. The appointed hour may come at any time to cut off your head. The ever-open grave is either the door to a pit of non-being and eternal darkness, or the gate onto a world more permanent and light-filled than this world. Respected sirs, is it at all fair, is it at all reasonable, to consider the Risale-i Nur, which discloses and explains hundreds of questions related to belief like this one, to be a biased and harmful work that exploits politics? What law requires this? Also, since the secular republic remains impartial according to the principle of secularism and does not interfere with those without religion, of course it also should not interfere with religious people on whatever pretext.32

550

  Politics Nursi was also accused of having established an organisation for political purposes, with the court pushing him on a number of occasions to reveal where he had secured the funds for this supposed initiative. His reply was as follows: Firstly, I ask those who ask this: what document, what is there, to suggest the existence of such a political organization? What evidence, what proof have they found that we have set up an organization with the money they so persistently ask about? For the last ten years I was in the province of Isparta under strict surveillance. I used to see only one or two assistants and in ten days one or two travellers. I was alone, a stranger, tired of the world, felt extreme disgust with politics, and had repeatedly witnessed how powerful political movements had been harmful and come to nothing through their reactions. I rejected and took no part in political movements when among my own people and thousands of friends at the crucial opportunity, and fled from politics as though fleeing from the Devil, considering it to be the greatest crime to damage through political partisanship service to true belief, which is most sacred and which it is not permissible to harm by anything. It is not only me, but the province of Isparta and all who know me, and indeed anyone who possesses reason and conscience, will meet with disgust the slanders of those who say, ‘There is such a organization and you are hatching political plots,’ and will say to them, ‘You are accusing him due to your own malicious plans.’ Our business is belief. Through the brotherhood of belief, we are brothers with ninety-nine per cent of the people of Isparta and this country, whereas a society or organization is the alliance of a minority within the majority. Ninety-nine people do not form a society in the face of one man.33

The ‘Third Said’

With the advent of the multi-party system in the late Forties, we see yet another transition as the ‘New Said’ becomes the ‘Third Said’. While the underpinning of these transitions is overwhelmingly a psycho-spiritual one, it is impossible to overlook the fact that they also tend to coincide with periods of great political change. With the defeat of the Republican People’s Party in 1950 and the rise of the Democrat Party, Nursi’s self-imposed exile from the political world comes to an end.34 This did not mean, however, that Nursi was somehow reneging on the promise he had made to himself to remain aloof from politics and all things political. The Democrats, despite being committed to Kemalist principles, were not hostile to religion in the way that the Republicans had been perceived to be. Furthermore, they were avowedly antiCommunist and seemed ready and willing to put right all of the wrongs committed by their predecessors. For Nursi, it is not clear whether it was the Democrats’ tacit support for Islam, their stand against communism, or perhaps a mix of both, which led to his supporting them. But support them he did; he even acted in the capacity of a self-appointed, unofficial adviser, writing letters to Democrat deputies and government officials to offer them counsel and to give them guidance on how they might solve the problems caused by twenty-five years of Republican misrule by assuring that any policies they implemented were in accordance with the precepts of Islam. Nursi’s support for the Democrats was such that he called its leader, Adnan Menderes, a ‘hero of Islam’ and gave the Party his vote in the 1957 elections, while

551

The Qur’an Revealed  encouraging his students to do the same.35 As for the Democrats, they were glad of support from such a large demographic, particularly at times when political fortune seemed to be against them. But Nursi had not undergone any dramatic political rebirth. He saw the Democrat Party as a real means of helping the growing Nur movement in its fight against the threat of communism and its attempt to remedy the ills visited on the country by the insidious spread of materialism and irreligion. Nursi, despite his support for democracy, was not a Democrat by conviction; as he himself admitted, he backed the Democrat Party simply because it was the lesser of two evils. Unlike many of the reformists of the late nineteenth century who had used religion for the sake of politics, Nursi was advocating politics as a means of serving religion. He made this clear in a letter he wrote to the new President of the Republic, Celal Bayar: In the face of those who have ill-treated us, making politics the tool of irreligion in a fanatical manner, we work for this country and nation’s well-being by making politics the tool and friend of religion.36

One cannot help but get the impression that by ‘those who have ill-treated us’, Nursi is referring not only to the malfeasants behind the Kemalist excesses of twenty-five years of Republican rule, but also to those thinkers and ideologues with whom he had thrown in his lot prior to the rise of the Republic, but whose intentions had proved so very different to his own. The fact that he often called the Democrats ‘supporters of freedom’ seems to corroborate this. By ‘freedom’, Nursi meant freedom that accorded with the precepts of religion, which is something he worked towards during the Constitutional Period, but against which the ulterior motives of his fellow intellectuals conspired. It seems to have been Nursi’s hope that the Democrats might succeed where others had failed. However, always the realist, he was not naïve enough to believe that it would be in his own lifetime: Adnan Menderes is a champion of religion; he has performed great services for religion and will perform [more]. But he won’t see the fruits of this that he wishes. I too have performed services for religion, I can’t conceal it, but like him, I won’t see the results. The fruits of both will be seen in the future.37

Conclusion

This study of the three phases of Nursi’s life, characterised as they are by very different approaches on his part to politics and political life, comes of course with a caveat. For it is important to bear in mind that political engagement in the Nursian sense of the term differs from political engagement as we might understand it today. Firstly, it was dynamic and completely in accordance with both context and the dictates of what he perceived to be the Quranic ideal; secondly, Nursi was never interested in status or position, be it political or otherwise, and had no aspirations of carving out for himself any kind of political career. If he engaged with politics, it was solely in the capacity of ‘warner’ or ‘admonisher’ – in very much the same way that the Prophet was sent to warn, guide and give good counsel. Nursi’s engagement with politics was in a sense informed by his compassionate desire to save the politicians from themselves, and the overriding imperative he felt to protect the truths and

552

  Politics ideals of Islam from the depredations of the politicians. This is clear from his involvement with the Democrat Party, for his support was limited to offering them guidance and good counsel, encouraging them to take measures which would strengthen the roots of religion in the country, and urging them to renew links with the rest of the Muslim world. That he was a Democrat by necessity rather than conviction may be understood from his reference to the Democrats as ‘the lesser of two evils’, signifying the importance which Nursi placed on the preservation of religious ideals rather than the promotion of a political party. For him, those ideals are threefold: The three supreme matters in the worlds of humanity and Islam are belief, the sharī‘a and life. Since the truths of belief are the greatest of these, the select and loyal students of the Risale-i Nur avoid politics with abhorrence so that they should not be made the tool to other currents and subject to other forces, and those diamond-like Quranic truths not reduced to fragments of glass in the view of those who sell or exploit religion for the world, and so that they can carry out to the letter the duty of saving belief, the greatest duty.38

Indeed, it is a fundamental principle of students of the Risale, Nursi continues, that as far as possible they do not interfere in politics or become involved with government adminstration. The reason for this, he says, is that their lives are dedicated to the service of the Quran, and they have neither time nor inclination for anything else. Also, no one who enters politics, among the overwhelming currents that now prevail, can preserve his independence and sincerity. He is bound to become subject to one of the currents, and it will exploit him for worldly ends. It will corrupt the sacredness of his duty. Also, in the material struggle, due to the utter tyranny and despotism that is the rule this century, he would have to crush numerous innocent supporters of a person because of the error that person had made. He would otherwise be defeated. It would also seem in the view of those who had given up their religion for the world, or who exploited it, that the Quran’s sacred truths, which can be the tool of nothing, were being exploited for political propaganda. Also, every class of people, supporters and opposers, officials and common people, should have a share of those truths and all are in need of them. The Risale-i Nur students have therefore to avoid politics and the material struggle completely, and not be in any way involved in them, so that they may remain completely impartial.39

The principle outlined above concerns the students of the Risale-i Nur. However, one can extrapolate from this and conclude that Nursi’s warnings against political involvement on the part of his students are, by virtue of the fact that his was a religious movement, applicable to the clerical classes too. In short, scholars of religion are to have no part in political matters, for their true strength lies in the dissemination of the truths of the Quran rather than in political administration. The notion that a hierocratic elite might take the reins of power and establish an ‘Islamic government’ would, one assumes, have appalled Nursi, for whom religion was a discourse between man and his Creator, and not a discourse of power. The cynic may say that politics as a discourse of power is the only kind of politics which exists, and that apart from the technique of Machiavelli, there is no other technique

553

The Qur’an Revealed  in evidence – and if there is, it is doomed to failure. This is, of course, painting a picture that is far blacker than necessary. Politics does not have to be about pursuing ends at all costs, and Nursi knew this: he only had to look back at the example of the Prophet and the Companions to see that administration, governance, decision making, negotiation, arbitration and the general day-to-day running of political units as small as a hamlet or as large and sprawling as an empire could be effected justly and in accordance with sacred precepts. It is clear that in his formative years, Nursi believed that politics was a viable means through which certain sacred objectives might be realised. His conviction that constitutionalism, democracy and republicanism were all at one with Islam was formed at a very early age, and never really left him. But these are political ends, not political means, and it was undoubtedly political means – politics as technique, and a certain kind of technique at that – which he had in mind when he talked about taking refuge from it in God. For him, if technique was not underpinned by belief, there was always the danger of ends justifying means, however ostensibly virtuous those means might be. Part of Nursi’s popular appeal lay in his adamant and unwavering assertion that it is belief (īmān) which must be renewed and protected, and that all other endeavors must be approached with the primacy of belief, self-awareness (ma‘rifat al-nafs) and Godconsciousness (taqwā) in mind: the fact that, unlike many of the popular Muslim thinkers of his own epoch, he eschewed political involvement – particularly involvement fuelled by alleged concerns for religion - earned him respect and conferred on him a sense of authenticity that would perhaps be found wanting in so many other Muslim thinkers. Another part of his appeal lay in his shrewd interpretation of the forces ranged against him. For Nursi, unlike many of the Muslim scholars, leaders and ideologues who would come later, many with grandiose plans for the re-establishment of the caliphate or the creation of ‘Islamic’ states, realized that if there is a conflict between Muslim beliefs and modernity, it is not a conflict that concerns issues of governance or technology, science or democracy. As is clear in passage after passage of his works, Nursi believed that the conflict is ultimately over the issue of transcendence. Although he may not have articulated it in these terms, he was aware that the post-Enlightenment world located man at the centre of the universe – a position which Islam, with its emphasis on the contingency of all created beings and the absolute dependence of humankind on God, is unable to accept. In his discourse on belief and unbelief, Nursi maintains that human beings are faced with one simple but momentous choice: belief in the sovereignty of God or belief in the sovereignty of man, with all that such a choice entails. For Nursi, the way to salvation consists solely in choosing the Other over the self, and it is in the dynamics of this choice that the key to an understanding of Nursi’s take on spirituality and the human being’s place in the cosmos may be found. If Nursi’s approach to renewal and reform as the ‘Old Said’ was informed primarily by the perceived need for socio-political change, this was certainly not the case during the ‘New Said’ years. His concern for socio-political change remained as ardent as ever, but the dynamic was different: renewal and reform continued to occupy a central position in the Nursian worldview, but, unlike so many of his contemporaries, it was the renewal of belief and the reform of the individual that now constituted his primary concern. In this respect,

554

  Politics once he becomes the ‘New Said’, he also becomes one of few Muslim thinkers of his age with little or nothing to say about the socio-economic or political externals of Muslim life. In the fifty years since Nursi’s death, ‘Islam is a complete way of life’ has been the mantra of choice for the vast majority of Muslim movements. Consequently, emphasis has been largely on the implementation of Islam at the socio-political level, with debate and discussion focusing mainly on issues such as ‘Islamic law’, ‘Islamic education’ and the concept of the ‘Islamic state’. As such, it is fair to say that the lion’s share of Muslim movements have adopted an ‘externalist’ approach to the Islamic revelation, seeing in the strict adherence of Muslims to the sharī‘a – and, where necessary, the imposition of such adherence through legislative means – the key to the formation of what they believe is the ideal Muslim society. For the ‘externalists’, reform has come to mean chiefly the reform of society, the underlying aspiration of which must be to return to the “golden age” of Islam typified – for the externalists at least – by the community-state of Medina during the lifetime of the Prophet. These ‘dreams of Medina’, and the concomitant desire to share – or, even, impose – those dreams on others, are responsible in part for the current Western perception of Islam as more political ideology than divinely-revealed religion. The relative merits and demerits of ‘Islamism’ or ‘political Islam’ as terms by which to describe this politicized approach to the Islamic revelation need not occupy us here. Suffice to say that in the last analysis, this approach rests on the fulcrum that is the return of ‘Islamic rule’, the transformation of the Muslim world into an umma (community) analogous to the community-state of Medina and, wittingly or otherwise, the reduction of Islam to the single issue of governance. While Islam made political and transformed into ideology is a relatively recent phenomenon, the ‘externalist’ approach to Islam which informs it is almost as old as Islam itself. However, whereas for scholars such as Ghazālī in the twelfth century and Mullā S.  adrā in the seventeenth it was the nomocentrism of the externalist scholars and the maximalist approach to law (fiqh) which constituted the greatest obstacles to the health of the Muslim community, for the Ghazālīs and S.  adrās of today – of whom Nursi is undoubtedly one – it is the politicization of religion to the detriment of belief which is one of the most pernicious dangers. This is not to say, of course, that ‘dreams of Medina’ are fuelled necessarily by ulterior motives: not everyone who believes that the politicization of Islam is a worthwhile means to an even more worthwhile end may be castigated for his convictions. But experience has shown that to ‘dream of Medina’ without first undergoing the hardships of Mecca betokens the kind of short-termist approach that is bound to fail. History – and recent history at that – has shown that Islam cannot be imposed top-down without serious socio-political repercussions. The ‘quick-fixism’ of that vast web of ideologically interconnected groupings and movements which constitute the ill-named phenomenon known as ‘Islamism’ is almost diametrically opposed to the gradualist approach of the pragmatic Nursi, in whose head, we argue in the final chapter of this book, these ‘dreams of Medina’ did not appear. As is clear from that period of life in which he is known as the ‘New Said’, Nursi carried out a protracted challenge to the secular nationalism of Ataturk; however, at no time did he ever advocate open rebellion. After the establishment of the Republic in 1923, he seemed to accept the notion that peaceful co-existence with the secular system was possible on the

555

The Qur’an Revealed  proviso that the people’s right to practice their faith without let or hindrance was preserved and respected by the state, and that the foundations of Islam were not weakened by it. He seemed to believe sincerely that it was possible for Islam to function within the confines of contemporary life and secular society, with Muslims able to practise their religion without actually taking the reins of political authority in the name of Islam. In this sense, Nursi stood out from many Muslim thinkers of the period who all advocated a politicised – and thus ideologised - Islam that had governance as its central aim. After the First World War, Nursi was no longer interested in politics as a means of safeguarding Islam: he thought that the future of Islam depended not on someone ruling in its name but in people reviving the faith in their hearts. The politics of the ‘people of the world’, he claimed, were inimical to the aims and objectives of Islam, which is why he rejected any kind of committed personal engagement with political or administrative affairs. And it was his unwillingness to advocate ‘political Islam’ which, among other things, distinguishes him from other Muslim thinkers of his day. For Nursi, then, Islam does not necessarily need a dedicated ‘religious state’ or ‘Islamic republic’ in order to flourish: in his view, the future of Islam is contingent neither on government by Muslim clerics nor the institutionalisation of the sharī‘a. For Nursi, Islam and the faith of the commonalty are better off when the powers that be leave them alone, and when Muslims do not meddle in politics or seek to govern. In order for Islam to flourish, Nursi believed, all that is required is that the truths of religion be communicated correctly and the light of belief strengthened and re-strengthened continuously. The Risale-i Nur, fruit of several decades of hardship, oppression, imprisonment and isolation, was Nursi’s lasting contribution to these aims.

556

Chapter Eighteen On jihād We have returned from the lesser struggle (jihād al-asghar ) to the greater one (jihād al-akbar) 1 Whatever physical jihād demands, we are not charged with that duty at the moment.2

Introduction

One of the defining features of the vast majority of Muslim political thinkers and Islamist groups of the past fifty to one hundred years has been the willingness to countenance the use of force in order either to overthrow ‘religiously suspect’ regimes within the Muslim world itself or to counter what are perceived to be attacks on the ‘house of Islam’ from without. Be they uprisings or revolutions engineered in order to create what their architects believe to be ideal ‘Islamic societies’, or be they indiscriminate attacks on those outside the world of Islam who are as its enemies, the term jihād is never far from the lips of many of those who justify such actions and the majority of those who denounce them. Despite its ubiquity in modern discourse, the term jihād remains mistreated and misunderstood. One of the peripheral objectives of this chapter is to explore some of the misperceptions regarding its connotations and to show that one of the main reasons for the term’s misuse is the lack of comprehension of the fact that conceptions of what jihād signifies have differed through history according to time and circumstance. The central objective, however, is to explore Said Nursi’s approach to the issue of the use of force in the name of Islam, be it to overthrow suspect Muslim regimes or to wage wars against external enemies. For it is precisely on this issue that one becomes aware of the fundamental difference that exists between Nursi’s position and that of his contemporaries. As we have seen in Chapter Seventeen, Nursi is distinguished not only by his aversion to politics and the politicization of Islam, but also by his unswerving opposition to the notion of rebellion or revolution in the name of Islam and for the sake of political power. And on no issue is the difference between Nursi and the majority of his contemporaries drawn more sharply than on the emotive and highly contentious issue of jihād.3 Before we look at Nursi’s teachings

557

The Qur’an Revealed  on the subject, however, it is necessary to address the misperceptions mentioned earlier by referring back to the main primary source of Muslim learning, the Quran.

The term jihād in the Quran

The Arabic verbal noun jihād is derived from the tri-consonantal root j – h – d, the general overall meaning of which is ‘to toil’ or ‘to exert (oneself ) strenuously’. A much-favoured rendering of this verb among translators of the Quran into English is ‘to strive’, the connotations of which accord well with those of the Arabic. The word jihād, then, means ‘striving’, or the exertion of oneself to the full extent of one’s ability. In the Quran, we often find that ‘striving’ is f ī sabīl Allāh, that is, literally, ‘on the way, or in the path, of God’. The full locution – jihād f ī sabīl Allāh – would thus give the meaning of striving with all one’s might, not, as some would have it, for the sake of God – for God is deemed to be above the need for benefit or advantage – but rather for the sake of drawing closer to God. The word sabīl adds further weight to this redefinition, for the ‘path’ to Divine proximity is both endless and filled with tribulation4: to navigate it successfully calls for ‘striving’; it demands constant jihād. That jihād admits of a certain definitional ambiguity is taken as given: were it not multivalent, as both the Quran and the early literature show, then the fact that there are many ways of ‘striving’ on God’s path would have remained obscured. Despite this, in texts written about Islam one still sees an aversion to the idea that the word may be open to multiple meanings. Occasionally, a nod is given towards the notion of jihād as ‘spiritual struggle’, although what that actually means is rarely elucidated. More common, however, is the rendering of jihād in English as ‘fighting for the sake of God’ or, more misleadingly still, ‘holy war’.5 Experts in Arabic lexicology are, however, unequivocal in their assertion that there is nothing in the word jihād to indicate that the ‘striving’ it denotes is to be effected by force of arms.6 That jihād has been conflated with ‘fighting’ and ‘holy war’ is evidence, for some Muslims at least, of the determination of Islam’s opponents to portray it as a religion that is not averse to the use of violence to achieve its aims. But to blame the misidentification of jihād as physical fighting on the detractors of Islam, or to see the reduction of the concept of jihād to war and war alone as proof of some nefarious Orientalist conspiracy, is to oversimplify the issue. Some Muslim scholars have also made the mistake of translating jihād in a way that reduces the meaning of ‘striving’ to military action, even though they concede that the remit of the word is, in theory, much broader;7 others, however, express the opinion that jihād can mean nothing but physical fighting, and that any notion of there being a ‘greater jihād ’ – one which targets man’s own concupiscent soul rather than an external enemy on the battlefield – is to be rejected.8 Furthermore, the vast majority of verses in which the word jihād or other derivates of j – h – d appear to allude to, or concern directly, situations in which physical fighting took place. Given this, it is not wholly surprising that connections have been made between jihād and the use of force, despite the fact that there is no linguistic justification for them. However, evidence that jihād is not reducible to fighting alone can be adduced quite easily from the fact that derivatives of j – h – d appear in the Meccan verses of the Quran,

558

  On jihād revealed several years before military action against the Prophet’s enemies became an actual option, let alone a theoretical consideration. For example, in 25:52 we read: Therefore listen not to the Unbelievers, but strive (jāhidu) against them with the utmost strenuousness (jihād) with the (Quran) …

In this comparatively early Meccan verse, the nascent community of Muslim believers is exhorted by God to strive against the unbelievers among the Quraysh through the medium of the revelation; here, the verses of the Quran itself, and the arguments it contains, are posited as the means whereby the believers are to wage jihād against those who reject the message. There is no inkling here of physical fighting, no hint of military threat: the believers are being encouraged to confront the unbelievers with the proofs of Divine Unity which are to be found in the revealed scripture. This is equivocally a jihād of minds rather than of swords. Another verse, 29:6, does not specify what form the ‘striving’ should take, but, by virtue of the fact that it is a Meccan verse that was revealed before any of the Prophet’s battles took place, it shows that ‘striving’ is a term that is irreducible to physical fighting – a measure which could not have been further from the mind of a small community of Muslims for whom the very profession of belief meant marginalization and, on occasion, the very harshest of oppression from the Quraysh. And if any strive (jāhada) (with might and main), they do so for their own souls: for Allah is free of all needs from all creation. 9

From the context of the verse it would appear that God is telling the Muslims that if they expend their energies to attain proximity to Him, it is for their own good and their own salvation: it is they who are in need of God, not God Who is need of them. In the Medinese verses, jihād retains its general overall sense of ‘striving’, but now appears in passages that describe situations in which some form of physical action against the enemies of the Prophet was either encouraged or described. Examples are numerous, but a few are given below by way of illustration: Those who believe in Allah and the Last Day ask thee for no exemption from striving (yujāhidū) with their goods and persons. And Allah knoweth well those who do their duty.10 Those who were left behind (in the Tabuk expedition) rejoiced in their inaction behind the back of the Messenger of Allah. They hated to strive (yujāhidū ) with their goods and their persons, in the cause of Allah. They said, “Go not forth in the heat.” Say, “The fire of Hell is fiercer in heat.” If only they could understand! 11 When a Sura comes down, enjoining them to believe in Allah and to strive (jāhidū ) along with His Messenger, those with wealth and influence among them ask thee for exemption, and say: “Leave us (behind): we would be with those who sit (at home).” 12 But the Messenger, and those who believe with him, strive and fight (jāhadū ) with their wealth and their persons: for them are (all) good things: and it is they who will prosper. 13

Verse 9:44 refers to those Muslims who asked the Prophet to exempt them from participation in jihād which involved physical fighting, while 9:81 talks about those who disliked the idea of any kind of striving which involved armed combat, and as a result decided not to join their fellow Muslims on the battlefield. Verse 9:86 refers to those Muslims who saw

559

The Qur’an Revealed  their wealth and status as a possible means of exemption from the duty to fight, while 9:88 contrasts their attitude with that of the Prophet and those who believed in the cause. Yet even though these passages include clear references to armed conflict with the Prophet’s enemies, to translate jihād as it appears in such verses as anything but ‘striving’ is highly misleading. A battle needs more than soldiers: it also needs non-combatants such as cooks and nurses to tend the wounded, all of whom are ‘striving’ yet are not engaged physically in armed combat. Contributors to the war effort – the aged, for example, who may not have been able to fight but who possibly contributed from their wealth to help the cause – would also have been counted among the mujāhidūn (‘those who strive’). To those for whom the conflation of jihād with armed conflict or ‘holy war’ has become normalised, the above attempt at disambiguation may appear somewhat disingenuous. The insistence that jihād not be reduced to, or even translated as, physical fighting should not, however, be construed as the insistence of an apologist. Indeed, there is no need for apologetics in this regard when one considers that the Quran has a perfectly serviceable term that it uses to denote physical fighting and physical fighting alone, namely qitāl. A verbal noun derived from the tri-consonantal root q – t – l, which means ‘to fight’ or ‘to wage war’, qitāl is the word we encounter the most in those verses of the Quran which talk about fighting the enemy. For example: Fighting (qitāl ) is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But God knoweth, and ye know not. 14 Hast thou not turned thy vision to those who were told to hold back their hands (from fight) but establish regular prayers and spend in regular charity? When (at length) the order for fighting was issued to them, behold! a section of them feared men as or even more than they should have feared God: They said: “Our Lord! Why hast Thou ordered us to fight? Wouldst Thou not grant us respite to our (natural) term, near (enough)?” Say: “Short is the enjoyment of this world: the Hereafter is the best for those who do right: never will ye be dealt with unjustly in the very least!” 15

In short, jihād signifies the more general idea of ‘striving’ in the way of God, of which armed combat is only one aspect. As far as the terminology of the Quran is concerned, it is wrong to see jihād and qitāl as synonymous, since this reduces an extremely broad concept to a highly particularized one. For example, the Quran in a number of verses talks about ‘striving’ with one’s ‘goods and persons’. A case in point is the following: Only those are Believers who have believed in Allah and His Messenger, and have never since doubted, but have striven (jāhadū ) with their belongings and their persons in the Cause of Allah. Such are the sincere ones. 16

It becomes clear in this verse why it is wrong to conflate jihād with qitāl, for the simple reason that ‘striving’ with one’s possessions and one’s own self for the sake of gaining proximity to God encompasses almost everything that one could possibly do to achieve such an objective. And even if such ‘striving’ were connected with battle, it would include more than physical combat alone; indeed, as we have seen, it may not include it at all. In other words, jihād is more than militant jihād, and militant jihād is more than just engaging the enemy in armed

560

  On jihād combat.17 That jihād and qitāl are not coextensive may also be understood from the fact that ‘striving’ with one’s ‘goods and persons’ appears both in verses which include references to armed combat and verses which are not linked to the notion of fighting in any way whatsoever.18

Approaches to jihād in history

How jihād has been understood by Muslims through the ages depends on the particular socio-historical contexts in which they operated. The significance of jihād has also been subject to changes which reflect the needs and conditions of various Muslim polities and communities as they have varied over time. Said Nursi was clearly well aware of the fact that the formulation and significance of jihād are dependent on the socio-political conditions of the community at any one point in history, which is why he was able to reject the legitimacy of militant jihād and deem ‘striving’ to be a purely moral and spiritual endeavour. The sources suggest that in the early years of the Muslim community, however, the Quranic notion of jihād was understood in its widest sense, namely as a commitment to strive to the best of one’s ability in order to achieve proximity to God “with one’s goods and one’s self.” The early Muslim community was well aware that engaging the enemies of Islam in armed combat was one way in which this ‘striving’ might take place, but they were equally well aware that this was obviously not the only way. Indeed, Traditions narrated from the Prophet suggest that physical fighting constituted a ‘lesser’ form of striving: lesser, perhaps, in the sense that, unlike ‘spiritual striving’, physical fighting is not something that is designed to be unceasing. On returning from one battle, the Prophet is alleged to have said: We have returned from the lesser struggle (jihād al-asghar ) to the greater one (jihād al-akbar).19

When asked to explain what the ‘greater’ jihād was, the Prophet said that it was the struggle that every Muslim must undertake against his or her ‘evil-commanding soul’.20 The fact that this narrative does not appear in any of the canonical collections of Prophet Traditions has led numerous scholars through the ages to dismiss the notion of a ‘greater jihād ’ as spurious.21 Yet there are Traditions accepted as sound which echo the sentiments of the ‘greater jihād ’ narration. For example, when asked to describe the mujāhid, i.e. the one who undertakes jihād, the Prophet is said to have replied: “The mujāhid is one who undertakes jihād against his or her lower self in obeying God Almighty.” 22 This reputedly sound Tradition seems to consider jihād in its wide Quranic sense as any kind of struggle for the sake of God, including armed combat against one’s enemies. Indeed, early sources intimate that for the most part, Muslims did not see any perceptible qualitative difference between the various ways in which it was possible to strive, and that physical fighting was seen, particularly by those who engaged in it, as being no different in import from any other kind of striving: it may have had its own particular form, but insofar as it contributed to the betterment of the self and the wider Muslim society, it was on a par with praying, fasting or any other expression of ‘striving’. However, there are two arguments which lend credence to the ‘greater jihād ’ narration, regardless of whether it is acknowledged formally to be a genuine utterance of the Prophet or not. The first, alluded to earlier, is that militant jihād is

561

The Qur’an Revealed  ‘less’ than spiritual jihād not because it is qualitatively inferior but because, unlike ‘spiritual’ jihād, it is not designed to continue without interruption; the second is the fact that the notion of unceasing struggle against one’s ‘lower self ’ is one which runs like a leitmotif through Sufi spirituality and the works of the Muslims gnostics and theosophers. Ghazālī – revered and respected by Muslims of all persuasions and denominations -was just one of a multitude of medieval Muslim mystics who considered the ‘greater’ jihād as being key to the development of true spiritual inner vision and growth, and, as such, in one sense superior to the ‘lesser’ jihād waged on the battlefield.23 The fact that jihād is more often than not perceived as being synonymous with armed conflict owes much to the experience of the growing Muslim community in the early centuries of Muslim history. It is not difficult to understand why early jurists would have sanctioned the use of force not only as a means of defending the umma but also in order to expand the borders of the realm of Islam itself. Indeed, some scholars have argued that the notion of militant jihād stems from the early belief that Islam ‘ought to embrace the whole universe, if necessary by force’.24 As such, jihād was deemed incumbent on Muslims as a collective, and was seen as a perpetual duty. That this perception of the nature of jihād existed early on in Muslim consciousness is evidenced not only by the early Arab Muslim conquests carried out during the tenure of the ‘Rightly-Guided’ Caliphs, but also by the territorial expansion which occurred under the Umayyads, for whom conquest of new lands was a key policy. That the Abbasids reversed the policies of the Umayyads and, despite their military superiority, chose more peaceful means by which to conduct relations with the leaders of the non-Muslim territories which fringed their empire shows that difference of opinion existed as to whether offensive jihād was, by default, a prerogative of caliphal power; evidence exists of eighth-century scholars who believed that militant jihād is obligatory only as defensive war.25 The early Arab Muslim conquests of Syria, Egypt and Iran seemed to confirm to later Muslim leaders that the goal of Muhammad’s successors was to expand the borders of the Muslim realm and create a universal state. That the obligatory nature of offensive jihād later came to represent the majority view among medieval jurists may be a reflection of the disillusion felt by the key political actors in the Muslim world that such a state had never come to fruition. As, throughout the Abbasid era, a large part of the Byzantine Empire remained unconquered, attempts were made by jurists to rearrange the so-called ‘sword verses’ in order to facilitate their supersession over other passages in the Quran which might have allowed for alternative interpretations of the term jihād and, as a result, a very different juristic approach to it. The ‘sword verses’, some claimed, had now ‘abrogated’ those other verses in the Quran which promoted peaceful co-existence with non-Muslims. It is at this point that jihād became an ‘element of formalised piety’, designed in part to revive the expansionism of the early Muslim state and sacralise the means whereby Islam would be taken to the world. 26 In later centuries, most jurists came to see jihād as being religiously permissible only if declared and led by a Muslim leader whose legitimacy was acknowledged by the majority of his Muslim subjects. In practice, however, legitimacy was such a contested issue that relatively few jurists were ready to issue unequivocal rulings on it. Nevertheless, many

562

  On jihād military leaders exploited the notion of jihād as an expression of piety by claiming that they owed their legitimacy, in part at least, to success in jihād waged for the sake of Islam. The Ottoman Empire, for example, has often been called the ‘empire of the ghazāt ’ on account of the fact that success in ghazā (lit. ‘raiding’, a synonym of jihād) was deemed to be a integral component of Ottoman legitimacy.

The Nursian perspective on jihād

While Said Nursi’s pronouncements on jihād are few, they are unambiguous and incisive: the only kind of jihād that is appropriate for the present age, he says, is ‘spiritual’ (ma‘nawī ) or moral jihād. On an individual level, this entails ‘striving’ against the whims and caprices of one’s own evil-commanding soul in an attempt to purify it. It means the subdual of the self-seeking ‘I’ for the sake of the collective ‘we’ – a measure made necessary by the fact that the present age is the age of the self-aggrandizing ego. And because it is the age of the ego, it is only by means of the formulation of a collective personality which self-identifies as muslim that the dangers of the modern era – misguidance and unbelief – may be challenged to any effect. Such striving as is directed against other than one’s own soul is usually described by Nursi as ‘external’ jihād’ – a term that should not be confused with ‘militant jihād’, or the kind of ‘striving’ which, traditionally, involved the waging of armed conflict against the physical enemies of Islam. That Nursi accepts the theoretical legitimacy of militant jihād is not disputed; after all, to reject it would be to reject the validity not only of an important Quranic precept but also the struggles of the Prophet against his enemies. Given his knowledge of the origins and development of Muslim civilization, Nursi would have been as aware as anyone else of those situations in Muslim history – and in the era of the Prophet and the Righteous Caliphs in particular – which required the expression of jihād in military terms. However, even though he accepts the theoretical validity of this particular form of jihād, he still sees it as a ‘lesser evil’ which is tolerated only for the realization of a greater good. A lesser evil is acceptable for a greater good. If an evil which will lead to a greater good is abandoned so that a lesser evil should not occur, a greater evil will have been perpetrated. For example, there are certainly some minor material and physical harms and evils in sending soldiers to fight a jihād, but the jihād leads to a greater good whereby Islam is saved from being conquered by infidels. If the jihād is abandoned due to those lesser evils, the greater evil will come after the greater good has gone, and that is absolute wrong. Another example: to amputate a finger which is infected with gangrene and has to be amputated is good and right, although it is apparently an evil. For if it is not amputated, the hand will be amputated and that would be a greater evil. 27

The waging of militant jihād is justified, according to Nursi, only if it is to ‘save Islam from being conquered by infidels’. Nursi’s phraseology here has to be unpacked carefully. As his other pronouncements on jihād show, by ‘Islam’ here he means ‘the sphere of Islam’. The ‘sphere of Islam’ appears to be a paraphrase of the old dār al-islām – the ‘house of Islam’ – which, in classical juristic terms, signified those lands in which Muslims were able to enjoy peace, security and freedom of religious practice. The antithesis of the dār al-islām was the

563

The Qur’an Revealed  dār al-h. arb – the ‘house of war’ – or those lands in which Islam does not dominate, in which God’s will as understood in the Quranic sense is not expressed, and in which, since its way of life is inimical to the foundational principles of Islam, there can never be peace in the true sense of the term. This polarization of the world into these mutually antithetical divisions has no Quranic basis; nor can any evidence of it be found in the Prophetic Traditions. While its exact origins are unknown, some scholars have traced it back to the jurists of the eighth century, who used the terms dār al-islām and dār al-harb as a demarcating device in order to make clear the concept of distinction between safe and unsafe, Islamic and non-Islamic, to a rapidly expanding Muslim umma which was now interacting on numerous levels with the non-Muslim nations beyond its borders. The division was also useful when it came to the issue of waging war against the enemies of Islam, for early Muslim jurists defined this kind of jihād as the means whereby the dār al-islām was defended from invasion and intrusion by non-Muslim forces. In Nursi’s day, the ‘sphere of Islam’ would have been construed as being synonymous with the Ottoman Empire, which from the early sixteenth century had for all intents and purposes been synonymous with the Caliphate, even though it never enjoyed universal recognition as such. As we have seen in the previous passage, Nursi accepts that, in theory, the ‘sphere of Islam’ is inviolate and must, if attacked, be prepared to defend itself through militant jihād, for the simple reason that the ‘sphere of Islam’ is in a certain sense Islam in physical form. Thus an attack on the ‘sphere of Islam’ is seen as an attack on the foundational principles of Islam itself, and must be met with resistance at all costs. Use of force within the ‘sphere of Islam’, however, was proscribed, as Nursi points out on a number of occasions. In a jihād, even if it is a religious one, circumstances for children of disbelievers (kāfir) remain the same. Those children can be war spoils: Muslims may take them into custody and keep them as their own. However, if a Muslim becomes a disbeliever, his children cannot be taken into the custody or possession of anyone, under any circumstances. This is because these innocents are tied not to their disbelieving parents but to Islam and to the community of Muslims. But, children of disbelievers, although they be from among the ‘people of salvation’ (i.e. ‘People of the Book’) may be taken captive during a jihād, for they are dependent on, and connected to, their parents in terms of both life and law. 28

From these last two passages, then, it appears that Nursi’s position on militant jihād is more or less consonant with those of his juristic forebears from the early medieval period. However, the more acquainted we become with the whole range of his pronouncements on jihād, the more it becomes apparent that his understanding of the concept was a dynamic one, changing according to circumstance and the exigencies of the age. Thus we see a gradual shift in his approach towards a clear declaration of the impermissibility of militant jihād in the external sense, namely outside what Nursi calls the ‘sphere of Islam’ – a sphere which, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the concomitant abolition of the Caliphate, now became impossible to define, at least in the territorial sense of the term. Even though in the ‘Old Said’ era the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate were in theory coextensive with the ‘sphere of Islam’, in which case any physical attack on the

564

  On jihād Empire would have been perceived by the Muslims as tantamount to an attack on Islam and therefore legitimate grounds for the declaration of militant jihād, Nursi’s support for constitutionalism and reform at this time suggests, one may argue, that his support for such an endeavour might not have been forthcoming. In 1909, more than a decade before the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, Nursi was redefining jihād in a way that obviated any possibility of its including military action at that particular juncture of history. All believers are charged with upholding the Word of God, and at this time the most effective means of doing this is material progress. For the Europeans are crushing us under their tyranny with the weapons of science and industry. We shall therefore wage jihād with the weapons of science and industry on ignorance, poverty and conflicting ideas, the worst enemies of upholding the Word of God. 29

The jihād that Nursi refers to here is the jihād that he believed the Muslim world must wage against its own shortcomings if it was to avoid further humiliation at the hands of ‘the Europeans’, whose supremacy over the Muslims was now measured in terms not of military domination but of superior scientific and technological know-how. Appalled by the parlous state of Muslim society, beset as it was with problems of poverty, ignorance, disunity and the erosion of moral values, Nursi advocated a reaffirmation of religious faith that had at its heart a commitment not only to the moral amelioration of society but also to its material betterment. For the ‘Old Said’, the scientific and technical advances of the West were not to be rejected simply on account of their provenance; it was important, he believed, to separate those offerings of the West which were conducive to true human happiness from those which were dysfunctional to it. Furthermore, he asserted, those positive achievements which were being touted as the fruits of Western ingenuity were not the monopoly of the West: whatever scientific and technological heights the Europeans were scaling, they were doing so on the shoulders of countless scholars, thinkers, scientists and sages from numerous other civilizations, whose contribution to the sum of human knowledge was not to be overlooked or underestimated. Having dealt with the jihād that Muslims were to wage against themselves, the ‘Old Said’ then turns to what he calls ‘external jihād’ – the jihād against unbelievers outside the ‘sphere of Islam’. As for external jihād, we shall refer it to the decisive proofs of the Illustrious Shari’a. For conquering the civilized is through persuasion, not through force as though they were savages who understand nothing. We are devotees of love; we do not have time for enmity. 30

Here the ‘Old Said’ asserts unequivocally that the time for militant jihād against external human enemies is over, for the simple reason that the threats posed by such enemies are no longer physical but, rather, ideological and intellectual. As Nursi admits on a number of occasions, the use of force against ‘infidels’ who were attacking the ‘sphere of Islam’ was justifiable in the past: then, Muslims were compelled to rise to the military challenge posed by their non-Muslim enemies by resorting to ‘external’ jihād which involved force. But today, he argues, the ‘sphere of Islam’ is no longer under threat from barbarians: today’s Europeans are, he argues, civilized and therefore cannot be subdued by force, as though they

565

The Qur’an Revealed  were still savages. For Nursi, ‘external’ jihād had to be a jihād of persuasion, with weapons such as material progress and the pen of the Muslim intellectual. The ‘external’ jihād against the non-Muslim enemies of Islam should, he implies, be built on the foundations of the jihād that Muslims must wage within their own community, and against their own selves: Our way is concerned only with morality and religion.... The way of our society is to love the love which Muslims feel for one another, and to loathe any enmity that may exist among them; its path is to be moulded by the moral qualities of the Prophet Muhammad (PBWH) and to revive his practices (sunna); its guide is the illustrious sharia; its sword is decisive logical proofs; and its aim is to uphold the word of God…. [Our] society’s… way is to wage the greater jihād (jihād-i akbar) with one’s own [evil-commanding] soul, and to guide others. Ninety-nine percent of [its] aspiration is directed not to politics, but to licit aims that are the opposite of politics, such as the nurturing of fine morals, right conduct, and so on.... 31

The ‘New Said’, emerging after the failure of the Constitutional Movement and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, writes with increasing assuredness regarding the inappropriateness of militant jihād for modern society and its supersession by a jihād of moral reform, spiritual self-betterment and the use of intellectual, scientific and technological tools to ward off the metaphorical blows of the opponents of Islam. In one remarkable passage included in his Flashes, Nursi employs Quranic hermeneutics and abjad numerology in order to justify his claim that, following the downfall of the Empire and the establishment of the Turkish republic, ‘external’ jihād which employs force of arms is no longer legitimate. When calculated according to abjad and jafr, the verse Let there be no compulsion in religion; Truth stands out clear from error 32 points to the date 1350, and through its allusive meaning, says: Since the matters of religion were separated from those of this world on that date, freedom of conscience - which is opposed to force and compulsion in religion, and to religious struggle and armed jihād for religion - was accepted as a fundamental rule and political principle by governments, and this state became a secular republic. In view of this, jihād will henceforth be a non-physical religious jihād with the sword of certain, verified belief. Because it shows a flash of miraculousness indicating that a light will emerge from the Quran which will make known and set forth clearly proofs so powerful they will demonstrate almost visibly the guidance and truths of religion.33

It is not clear whether the year 1350 is the h. ījri lunar year or the solar Ottoman year: if it is the former, 1350 equates to 1931/2; if it is the latter, it equates to 1934.34 What is clear, however, is Nursi’s assertion that with the disestablishment of the Caliphate and what amounted to a separation of ‘church and state’ with the advent of the Republic, militant jihād had now become defunct. Here, the Quranic verse which prohibits Muslims from compelling others to accept Islam is, having been recast as ‘freedom of conscience’, placed on the lips of the architects and champions of the Republic and acknowledged as one of the underlying ideological principles of the new, secular state. Naturally, as a secular state, the Turkish Republic was no longer considered to be coextensive with the ‘sphere of Islam’ in the way that the Ottoman Empire was, and therefore it had no locus – and, by its own admission, no wish – to assume the religious role and duties of its caliphal predecessors, one

566

  On jihād of which was the declaration of jihād. Similarly, the new Constitution stipulated clearly that there was to be no interference whatsoever of ‘sacred religious feelings’ in politics and affairs of state.35 It is with this in mind that Nursi has no qualms about declaring militant jihād impermissible: so long as the state is an avowedly secular entity with no claims to religious legitimacy, jihād – which nevertheless remains incumbent on individual Muslims – must by definition be a non-physical one, to be waged in a manner that does not contravene the laws laid down by the secular regime. For Nursi, it was clear that Islam and the state were no longer coextensive; consequently, an attack on ‘the sphere of Islam’ in the territorial sense was meaningless, for the simple reason that there was no ‘sphere of Islam’ to attack. The ‘sphere of Islam’ was no longer a physical state – a political entity – but, rather, a state of mind. A physical attack by non-believers on post-Republican Turkey, for example, could not be met by a military jihād, for the simple reason that post-Republican Turkey was, by definition, no longer the physical ‘sphere of Islam’. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and what was left of the Caliphate, the potential co-extensiveness of Islam and state was no longer an issue; consequently, not only was there no longer any need for militant jihād – for reasons already outlined – but also there was also no-one with the locus to sanction it. One may be forgiven for thinking here that Nursi is making rather ingenious use of the Republican principle of ‘freedom of conscience’ to shore up his own arguments about the impermissibility of militant jihād while simultaneously impressing on the Republicans the fact that the principle is, in fact, Quranic in origin and therefore nothing particularly novel. However, it was not solely because of the advent of the Republic that he felt able to declare militant jihād impermissible with such alacrity: as we have already seen, long before Turkey became a republic he had repudiated the notion that force of arms against non-Muslims in the name of Islam was permissible, but on purely intellectual rather than scriptural grounds. The Europeans, he argued, were not the barbarians they had once been; moreover, they were attacking the ‘sphere of Islam’ not with weapons of steel but with the ‘weapons’ of industry, technology, science and learning. The abolition of the Caliphate and the advent of the republic merely provided further proof, if it were needed, that the time for militant jihād was now over. There remained, of course, the problem of what were Muslims in Turkey to do if the Republic were to come under attack. The answer is straightforward: were the Turkish Republic to come under attack, it would defend itself by the declaration not of military jihād but of war. For Nursi, however, this was neither here nor there: he found the idea of war repugnant and had no emotional or ideological investment in the secular Republic, being of the opinion that so long as the state did not interfere in matters of religion, he – and his coreligionists – would not interfere in affairs of state. Thus a war waged for the sake of secular ideals would, he believed, be a piteous waste of human life, and one to which he could never give his blessing, dysfunctional as it would surely be to the goals of Islam. As for the calamity of war, it would cause great harm to our service of the Quran. Since the majority of our most valuable, self-sacrificing brothers are under the age of fortyfive, they would be forced because of war to leave their sacred service of the Quran and enrol in the army. If I had the money, I would gladly pay the thousand liras necessary

567

The Qur’an Revealed  to release each of such valuable brothers from military service. With hundreds of my valuable brothers leaving the Quranic service of the Risale-i Nur and laying hands on the club of physical jihād, I feel a loss in myself of a hundred thousand liras. Two years of a man’s military service, even, may cause perhaps a thousand liras of his immaterial profit to be lost. Anyway... like the One Powerful Over All Things sweeps and cleans in a minute the atmosphere filled with clouds and shows the shining sun in clear skies, so He may also dispel these black and merciless clouds and show the truths of the Shari’a like the sun, and give them without expense or trouble. We await it from His mercy that He will not sell them to us expensively. May He give intelligence to the heads of those at the top, and belief to their hearts; that would be enough. Then matters would put themselves to rights.36

Clearly written at a moment in history where the clouds of the impending Second World War were beginning to appear on the horizon, Nursi records his abhorrence of the violence and bloodshed that will inevitably occur as a result, leading to the loss of numerous lives which could be put to infinitely better use. He is even dismissive of the obligation to undergo military service, seeing it as two years of life wasted that might have been used to infinitely better effect in the service of God. As his own pre-Republic war record shows, Nursi was by no means a pacifist. However, the post-Republican ‘New Said’ had no time for what he described as being nothing more than the ‘duel’ of tyrants. With regard to the Second World War, Nursi wrote that because of the way it had polarized human society and filled it with harmful feelings of partisanship, his students should not be concerned with it and should avoid taking sides: For just as consent to unbelief is unbelief, so too consent to tyranny is tyranny. In this duel, tyranny and destruction so ghastly are occurring that they make the heavens weep… it has given rise to such fearsome wrongdoing that in its barbarism it is unprecedented. 37

It is clear from the Quran that jihād, in the widest sense of the term, is linked inextricably with the notion of moral order. In this sense, then, expressions of jihād which were meaningful in one particular historical context are not necessarily meaningful in another. How Muslims see themselves and their religion will determine how they understand notions such as jihād. If Islam is something which finds expression in statehood, as it did in the caliphal period, then the likelihood that it will be reduced in popular perception to that of armed conflict will increase. This naturally raises the question of whether Muslim identity is to be understood in political or communal terms. In short, is Islam reducible to the state? Most, if pressed, would probably concede that in the case of the Prophet’s community-state in Medina, the answer was probably in the affirmative. The conclusion that Nursi seems to have drawn - and which we can still draw today from recent experiments in Muslim political hegemony - is that Muslim identity will always be in jeopardy when it is deemed coextensive with the state and its governing institutions and norms, as in the case, say, of present-day Iran. Any threat to the ‘Islamic state’ will naturally be seen as a threat to Islam, for the simple reason that the state and Islam are seen as one. Whether Nursi ever saw Islam as being co-extensive with the Ottoman Empire is open to debate, although he was aware not only that most Muslims considered it to be so

568

  On jihād but also that numerous Muslim jurists throughout history had been of the same opinion. It was because of this that he was able, following the demise of the Empire, to use scriptural proofs in order to drive home his argument that jihād should henceforth be focused not on waging war but on the safeguarding of faith and the preservation of moral order. And these were goals that he deemed attainable regardless of whether Muslims lived in a caliphate or in a secular republic. Jihād was still incumbent on Muslims, but it was a different kind of jihād, designed to counter a different kind of danger: The greatest danger facing the people of Islam at this time is their hearts being corrupted and belief harmed through the misguidance that arises from science and philosophy. The sole solution for this is light; it is to show light so that their hearts can be reformed and their belief saved. If one acts with the club of politics and prevails over them, the unbelievers descend to the degree of dissemblers. And dissemblers are worse than unbelievers. That is to say, the club cannot heal the heart at this time, for then unbelief enters the heart and is concealed, and is transformed into dissembling. And at this time, a powerless person like myself cannot employ both of them - the club and the light. For this reason I am compelled to embrace the light with all my strength, and cannot consider the club of politics whatever form it is in. Whatever physical jihād demands, we are not charged with that duty at the moment. Yes, in accordance with a person’s way, a club is necessary to form a barrier against the assaults of the unbelievers or apostates. But we only have two hands. Even if we had a hundred hands, they would be sufficient only for the light. We do not have any other hands with which to hold the club! 38

The jihād Nursi is advocating here is the jihād which fights against the misguidance arising from what he describes elsewhere as the ‘evils of civilization’, indicated here by his allusion to the ‘line of philosophy’ discussed in Chapter Sixteen. The ‘striving’ one must undergo in order to counter the corruption of belief which is a result of this misguidance is the ‘striving’ to spread light: light is the only thing that can illuminate the darkness which surrounds man when his heart and soul are in a state of abject ignorance. It is obvious that Nursi is referring here mainly to the jihād that he himself was fighting: the jihād of the pen which yielded the ‘light’ of the Risale-i Nur, the ‘Epistles of Light’. However platitudinous the notion of the superiority of the pen over the sword may sound to the modern reader, for Nursi it was sacrosanct. People cannot be forced to believe in God or observe the pillars of Islam such as prayer and fasting; similarly, those who are lax in their belief or in their observation of the rites and rituals of Islam cannot be reformed with an iron fist. A state’s imposition of ‘Islamic law’ on its citizens is damaging not only to the people themselves but also their perception of Islam: as various attempts in the modern Muslim world to create ‘Islamic’ states have shown, unbelievers are forced into pretending they are believers, which ultimately ends up being considerably more dangerous than unbelief itself. This is not to say that the treatment of man’s psycho-spiritual ills by the application of ‘light’ will be a guaranteed success. The point Nursi is making, however, is that while there is every possibility that a jihād of the pen may not work, there is also every possibility that it may. A jihād of the sword, on the other hand, can never work; indeed, not only will it fail to improve matters, but it will also make them considerably worse than before.

569

The Qur’an Revealed  In short, militant jihād may have been appropriate as a means of defending the nascent community of Muslim believers at Medina during the time of the Prophet, for in a sense they embodied Islam: any attack on them was an attack on the religion itself, for it was through them that the religion was given expression. Today, however, as in Nursi’s time, the Muslims are not living in the Medina of the seventh century; nor do they have the mindset of Medina or the substructure of solid belief upon which the very existence of Medina as a paradigm was predicated. Put another way, Nursi’s approach to the amelioration of individual belief and the pursuit of moral order mirrors to an extent the approach of the Prophet himself. The first thirteen years of Muhammad’s mission in Mecca were dedicated for the most part to matters of faith, spirituality and the fostering of self-knowledge and Divine gnosis; when he eventually migrated to Medina, he had no pre-planned programme of radical social reform that he intended to foist upon its citizens. Indeed, when he entered Medina, he did so as a political refugee in search of a safe haven rather than as a demagogue bent upon imposing his own utopian vision on the people in order to create what he believed was an ideal ‘Islamic’ society. The society of Muslim believers which emerged in Medina did so as a result of a pooling of the efforts of committed, uncompelled individuals rather than the imposition by one man of a state religion and a complementary code of law that was to be applied by force. That the community-state of Medina understood armed combat against their enemies to be just another expression of the jihād which was incumbent on them at all times is a reflection of the particular exigencies of the age. Unlike most of his scholarly contemporaries, Nursi’s focus was not on the creation of an ideal socio-political system. He was not one given to ‘dreaming of Medina’. His focus was on the principles of belief – principles which many Muslims were forgetting or were taking as given, and principles which were under attack. He was never one to ‘dream of Medina’ when it was Mecca that the Muslim world needed. Nursi’s emphasis on the need to safeguard and perfect belief, his withdrawal from politics, his rejection of militant jihād and his gradualist approach to social reform all suggest that, unlike the vast majority of Muslim thinkers whose ‘dreams of Medina’ underpin their socio-political discourse, Nursi’s focus is wholly Meccan in orientation, based on his enduring desire for the betterment of the individual human soul as the prerequisite for the emergence of a lasting moral order in society at large.

570

Notes

Introduction 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8

Muhammad Mujtahid Shabistari, Dīn wa Āzādī (Tehran, 1999), p. 122. For biographical information on Nursi, and for an analysis of the development of Nurculuk, the faith movement comprised of his followers, the best source available at present is Şükran Vahide’s excellent Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (Istanbul, 2000). This biography remains the sole English language source for information on Nursi’s life, times and works. Quoted in: Vahide, op.cit., p. 261. Said Nursi, Epitomes of Light [Mathnawī al-Nūriyya] (Izmir, 1999), p. 300. Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, The Rays (Sözler Publications, 1998), p. 159. An in-depth study of the intellectual and spiritual influences on Nursi awaits the time and effort of future researchers of the Risale. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi‘ [Ed.], Islam At The Crossroads: On the Life and Thought of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (Suny Press, 2003). The passages from the Risale-i Nur collection used in this book are taken largely from Şukran Vahide’s translation, with some passages having been either re-translated or edited where necessary.

Chapter One 1 2 3 4 5 6

Quran, 39:38 - If indeed thou ask them who it is that created the heavens and the earth, they would be sure to say, “Allah”. Said Nursi, The Rays (Sözler Publications: Istanbul, 2002), p. 290. W. Mark Richardson, ‘Resurrection in the Writings of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi’ in Ibrahim M. Abu Rabi (Ed.), Theodicy and Justice in Modern Islamic Thought: the Case of Said Nursi (Ashgate: Farnham, 2010), p. 85. Ibid. For a concise introduction to the life and thought of Ibn Sīnā, see: Lenn E. Goodman, Avicenna (Cornell University Press: London, 2006). Ibn Sīnā, Al-ishārāt wa al-tanbīhāt ma‘a sharh.  Nas.īr al-Dīn al-T.  ūsī, ed. Sulaymān Dunyā, 3 Vols. (Cairo, 157-60), Vol. 2, p. 125.

571

The Qur’an Revealed  7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

572

Said Nursi, The Words (Sözler Publications: Istanbul, 2008), p. 685. Ibid. See, for example: Robin Attfield, Creation, Evolution and Meaning (Ashgate Publishing: Aldershot, 2006), p. 73. D. R. Duff-Forbes, ‘Hick, Necessary Being, and the Cosmological Argument’ in Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1972), p. 473. Attfield, op. cit., p. 74. Ibid. John Hick, ‘God as Necessary Being’ in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 57, Nos. 22-23 (1960), p. 734. Nursi, The Words, pp. 716-17. Ibid., p. 717. Ibid., pp. 717-18. Said Nursi, The Flashes (Sözler Publications: Istanbul. 2010), pp. 292-93. Quran, 16:60. Nursi, The Flashes, p. 293. Cyril Glasse, The New Encyclopaedia of Islam (Altamira Press: New York, 2001), p. 115. Quran, 35:15. Quran, 42:11. Nursi, The Letters, p. 290. Abū al-H .  asan al-Ash‘arī (874-936) was one of the early medieval period’s most renowned theologians. The Ash‘arite school of theology was so named on account of his pioneering work in theological discourse. See: Cyril Glasse, The New Encyclopaedia of Islam, pp. 62-63. H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1976), p. 36. The Mujassima is the group name of those who were accused of believing that God has a body; the H .   ashwiyya was a pejorative term to describe those scholars, particularly with anthropomorphist beliefs, who allegedly did not examine Traditions with the proper degree of scrutiny; and the Mushabbiha were another group accused of anthropomorphism. Wolfson, op.cit., p. 36. Nursi, The Words, p. 210. Ibid., pp. 639-40. Nursi, The Letters, p. 293. On the difference between God as Essence and God as Divinity, see: William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (SUNY Press: Albany, 1989), p. 59. Nursi, The Letters, p. 353. The following passage from Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae is instructive:  “But no name belongs to God in the same sense that it belongs to creatures; for instance, wisdom in creatures is a quality, but not in God...When we apply wise to God, we do not mean to signify anything distinct from his essence or power or being.  And thus when this term wise is applied to man, in some degree it circumscribes and comprehends the thing signified...Hence, no name is predicated univocally of God and creatures. Neither, on the other hand, are names applied to God and creatures in a purely equivocal sense... Because if that were so, it follows that from creatures nothing at all could be known or demonstrated about God; for the reasoning would always be exposed to the fallacy of equivocation. Therefore it must be said that these names are said of God and creatures in an analogous sense, that is, according to proportion.  For in analogies the idea is not, as it is in univocals, one and the same; yet it is not totally diverse as in equivocals; but the name which

  Notes

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57

is thus used in a multiple sense signifies various proportions to some one thing; e.g., healthy, applied to urine, signifies the sign of animal health; but applied to medicine, it signifies the cause of the same health.” Anton C. Pegis, Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas: Volume One (Hackett Publishing: Indianapolis, 1997), pp. 119-120. Nursi, The Words, p. 648. Ibid., pp. 648-49. On St. Anselm’s ontological arguments, see: Graham Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (CUP: Cambridge, 1995), pp. 7-16. Said Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness (Sözler Publications: Istanbul, 2004), pp. 21-22. Said Nursi, The Rays, p. 167. Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, p. 22. Nursi, The Rays, pp. 167-68. Ibid., p. 169. Nursi, The Flashes, p. 450. Ibid., p. 451. The notion that an eternal beauty requires eternal witnesses is elaborated upon in Chapter Two. Nursi, The Flashes, p. 115. Ibn al-‘Arabī, for instance, was scathing in his dismissal of the notion that it is only the incomparability of God that should be taken into account when trying to understand the reality of the Divine. “By God,” he writes, “If it were not for the Shari’a brought by the divine reportgiving, no-one would know God! If we had remained with our rational proofs – which, in the opinion of the rational thinkers, establish knowledge of God’s Essence, showing that ‘He is not like this’ and ‘not like that’ – no created thing would ever have loved God. But the tongues of the religions gave a divine report saying that ‘He is like this’ and ‘He is like that’, mentioning affairs which outwardly contradict rational proofs. He made us love Him through these positive attributes. Then, having set down the relationships and established the cause and the kinship which bring about love, He said, ‘Nothing is like Him’.” See: William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (SUNY Press: Albany, 1989), p. 180. See, for example, Quran, 6:100; 21:22; 23:91; 37:159 and 43:82. See n. 44. Quran, 112:4. Nursi, The Letters, p. 275. Ibid., pp. 271-72. The concept of ‘as above, so below’ in the sense of the similarity of the macrocosm to the microcosm was first laid out in The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, expressed in the words “That which is below corresponds to that which is above, and that which is above, corresponds to that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing” – the ‘One Thing’ being God or, as it is referred to in Hermeticism, ‘The All’ or ‘The One’. See: Nicki Scully, Alchemical Healing: A Guide to Spiritual, Physical, and Transformational Medicine (Bear & Company: Rochester, 2003), p. 321. Quran, 36:82. Nursi, The Rays, p. 33. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 185. Ibid., p. 186.

573

The Qur’an Revealed  58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

Ibid. Ibid., pp. 186-87. Ibid., p. 173. Quran, 48:4. Nursi, The Rays, p. 174. Quran, 21:22. Nursi, The Rays, pp. 174-75. Quran, 57:4. Quran, 3:27. Nursi, The Rays, pp. 176-77. Quran, 4:48. Nursi, The Rays, p. 177. Quran, 16:68. Nursi, The Rays, pp. 177-78. Quran, 16:66. Nursi, The Rays, p. 178. Ibid. Quran, 16:67. Nursi, The Rays, pp. 178-79. Ibid., p. 179. Ibid., pp. 192-93. Ibid., pp. 190-91. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 191-92. See: M.A. S. Abdel Haleem, ‘Context and internal relationships: key to quranic exegesis’ in Gerald R. Hawting, Approaches to the Qur’ān (Routledge: London, 1993), pp. 74-77. 85 Lloyd Ridgeon, ‘Azīz Nasaf ī (Curzon Press: Richmond, 1998), p. 67. 86 Ibid. 87 Quran, 19:75. 88 Quran, 33:43. 89 Hamid Naseem Rafiabadi, World Religions and Islam: A Critical Study (Sarup & Sons Publishing: New Delhi, 2003), p. 216. 90 Quran, 3:5-6. 91 Quran, 11:6. 92 Quran, 29:60. 93 Nursi, The Rays, p. 194. 94 Ibid., pp. 194-95. 95 Ibid., p. 195. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid., pp. 195-96. 98 Ibid., pp. 196-97. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., pp. 179-80. 101 Ibid., pp. 180-81.

574

  Notes 102 Ibid., p. 181. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid., pp. 181-82. 107 Ibid., p. 182. 108 Ibid., pp. 182-83. 109 Quran, 36:53. 110 Quran, 16:77. 111 Quran, 31:28. 112 Nursi, The Rays, p. 183. 113 For the Supplication of Kumayl, see: Abbas Qummi [Ed.], Kulliyāt-i Mafātīh al-Jinān (Gulī Publications, Tehran, n.d.), pp. 127-139. The Mafātīh, the most popular book of liturgy among the Shi’ites, is a veritable treasure-trove of invocations, supplications and meditations based on or around the ‘Beautiful Names’, including the famous Jawshan al-Kabīr. The Jawshan, an invocation which involves the recitation of a thousand divine names and attributes, and which is usually traced back to Muhammad through Ali’s great-grandson, Zayn al-‘Ābidīn, is a clear source of inspiration and support for much of Nursi’s ‘theology of Names’. He cites it frequently and its impact on him is evident in the tenor of his writing. For Nursi’s take on the importance of the Jawshan, see: Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, Risale-i Nur Külliyatı [2 Vols.] (Istanbul, 2004), vol.2, pp. 1745-1746. 114 Ibn al-Arabi’s Fusūs al-Hikam is a prime example, among many others. 115 For Nursi’s treatment of the hadith qudsi “I was a hidden treasure…”, see: Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, Risale-i Nur Külliyatı, Vol. 2, p. 1161. 116 For Eliade’s exposition of the hierophanic nature of creation, see: Douglas Allen, Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade (Routledge, 2002), pp. 74-83. 117 Nursi’s views on wah. dat al-wujūd are well-documented and appear at various points throughout the Risale. See, for example, his ‘Second Important Example’ in the Eighteenth Letter of Mektubat [The Letters], published as: B. Said Nursi, Letters 1928-1932 (Sözler Publications, Istanbul, 1994), pp. 106-109. 118 On the balance between tanzīh and tashbīh insofar as it pertains to Ibn al-‘Arabī’s conception of wahdat al-wujūd, see: William C. Chittick, “Ibn Arabi” in S. Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman [Eds.], History of Islamic Philosophy (Routledge, 2001), pp. 501-503. Nursi’s alleged disavowal of wah. dat al-wujūd and espousal of the Sirhindian notion of wah. dat al-shuhūd is discussed in Chapter Two, but would profit from further research. To my mind it is by no means clear that Nursi rejected in toto the thesis of ‘unity of being’ put forward by Ibn al-‘Arabī, although it is clear that he did repudiate the more ‘extreme’ variations of the theory, such as that proposed by pantheists such as Ibn Sab‘īn. 119 Nursi, The Words, p. 141. 120 Quran, 41:53. 121 “Whosoever knows his own self, knows his Lord” [Man ‘arafa nafsahu qad ‘arafa rabbahu] is a well-known dictum in Naqshbandi thought, which is claimed to have been influential on Nursi in his formative years. It should be noted, however, that the authenticity of this Tradition is contested by many mainstream Sunni scholars. 122 Nursi, The Words, p. 16. 123 Nursi often uses the term ‘cosmic book’ (kâinat kitabı) to describe the created realm, but on several occasions goes so far as to describe the universe almost as a kind of über-Quran, as in the phrase

575

The Qur’an Revealed  “…the mighty Quran inscribed by Divine power and called the universe…” in: Nursi, The Words, p. 484. 124 For one of his many elucidations of the bismillah, see: Nursi, The Words, pp. 15-17. 125 Nursi, The Words, p. 563.

Chapter Two 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

576

Nursi, The Letters, p. 336. Nursi, The Rays, p. 22. On this Tradition and its implications, see: Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, pp. 23-24. Nursi, The Letters, p. 105. Quran, 42:11. Ibid., p. 104. Ibid., p. 105. Nursi, The Words, p. 655. Quran, 16:60. Nursi, The Letters, p. 293. Nursi, The Words, p. 482. Nursi, The Letters, pp. 281-82. On the eternity or non-eternity of the world, or of God’s creativity, see: Jon Hoover, ‘Perpetual Creativity in the Perfection of God: Ibn Taymiyya on the hadith on God’s creation of the world’ in Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2004), pp. 287-329. Nursi is of the opinion that beings ‘exist as knowledge’ prior to their emergence into the phenomenal world, where they are given ‘external existence’. This is clearly very different to the notion of creation from nothing, or nothing becoming something. See: Nursi, The Flashes, p. 252. Elsewhere he talks of beings appearing from ‘apparent non-existence’, e.g. “Through the ‘command of “Be!” and it is,’ the Maker brings into external existence from apparent non-existence things whose plans, programmes, and shapes and proportions are present in His knowledge.” See: Nursi, The Rays, p. 33. Nursi also appears to equivocate somewhat on the issue of whether the creation as a whole has a starting point, affirming on occasion the beginning of all things yet stating categorically in at least one passage in the Risale that it is pointless to try to go back in time to find a starting point for the causal chain. This topic is discussed at some length in Chapter Twelve. This notion also appears to find support in the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya. See: Hoover, ‘Perpetual Creativity’, p. 294 and passim. Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, pp. 32-33. Ibid., p. 33. Nursi, The Words, p. 552. Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, p. 214. Ibid., pp. 214-15. Ibid., p. 215. Nursi, The Flashes, p. 115. On the ‘Divine duality’ enshrined in the concept-pair of jalāl and jamāl, see: Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam (SUNY Press: Albany, 1992), pp. 69-74. The notion of worshipfulness is discussed in Chapter Ten. For Nursi’s exposition of the nature of the ‘middle path’, see: Signs of Miraculousness, pp. 29-30. Quran, 16:60.

  Notes 27 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 291-92. 28 Mullā S. adrā Shīrāzī (1572-1640) is one of the most significant and influential Muslim philosophers to emerge in the past five hundred years. Known primarily for his work on ‘transubstantial motion’ (al-h. araka al-jawhariyya), Mullā S. adrā is recognized as having brought about a renaissance in metaphysical thinking, mostly within the Shi’ite world but also outside its borders. For a short introduction to his life and works, see: Sajjad Rizvi, Mulla Sadra Shirazi: His Life, Works and Sources for Safavid Philosophy (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2007). On the scholar and reformer Shah Walī Allāh Dihlawī (1703-62), see: J. M. S. Baljon, The Religion and Thought of Shah Wali Allah Dihlawi (Brill: Leiden, 1986). 29 It is, of course, impossible to identify all of the scholars whose works and ideas may have influenced Nursi and played a part in the formation of his ideas. What is interesting is the fact that Nursi has no reservations whatsoever about taking, or appearing to take, stances on cosmology which are characteristic more of mystics and theosophers than of theologians; Nursi clearly availed himself of what he believed to be truth wherever he found it, regardless of the doctrinal, disciplinary or ideological background of its expounder. 30 For an introduction to the discourse on the principiality or fundamentality of existence, see: ‘Abd al-Rasul ‘Ubudiyyat, ‘The fundamentality of existence and the subjectivity of quiddity’ in Topoi, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2007), pp. 201-12. 31 The Persian expression az ‘arsh tā farsh (lit. ‘from the Throne of God, i.e. the heavens, to the carpet, i.e. of the earth’), which means in effect absolutely everything, is also used by Nursi. 32 Hafiz A. Ghaffar Khan, ‘Shah Wali Allah’ in Edward Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 10 Vols. (Routledge: London, 1998), Vol. 8, pp. 732-35. 33 Nursi, The Words, p. 487. 34 There is evidence to suggest that the concept of wah. dat al-wujūd was first articulated by the Andalusian philosopher and mystic ‘Abd al-H .   aqq Ibn Sab‘īn (d. 1270). See: Vincent J. Cornell, ‘The All-Comprehensive Circle (al-Ih. āt. a): Soul, Intellect, and the Oneness of Existence in the Doctrine of Ibn Sab‘īn’ in: Ayman Shihadeh, Sufism and Theology (EUP: Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 31-48. 35 William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabī and the Problem of Religious Diversity (SUNY Press: Albany, 1994), p. 16. 36 Ibid., p. 15. 37 Quran, 24:35. 38 Chittick, Imaginal Worlds, pp. 16-17. 39 Ibid., p. 17. 40 Ibid. 41 Quran, 57:3. 42 Chittick, Imaginal Worlds, p. 17. 43 Ibid., p. 18. 44 Ibid., p. 19. 45 Taqī al-Dīn Ah.  mad Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) is one of the most significant and influential Muslim theologians and logicians of the medieval era, and arguably also one of the most controversial. The definitive biography of this scholar remains to be written, but for an interesting and relatively well-written introduction, see: Yossef Rapoport & Shahab Ahmed (Eds.), Ibn Taymiyya and his Times (OUP: London, 2010). 46 Cyril Glasse, The Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam (AltaMira Press: New York, 2002), p. 432. 47 Ibid. 48 Shaykh Ah.  mad Sirhindī, Maktūbāt (Karachi, n.d.), Vol. 2, Letter 98, p. 257.

577

The Qur’an Revealed  49 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 371. 50 Ibid., p. 369. 51 Ibid., pp. 369-70. 52 Nursi, The Letters, p. 78. 53 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 370. 54 On al-a‘yān al-thābita, and in particular Ibn al-‘Arabī’s articulation of the concept, see: Abul Ela Affifi, The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyid Din-ibnul Arabi (AMS Press: New York, 1974), pp. 4753. 55 Hafiz A. Ghaffar Khan, ‘Shah Wali Allah’, p. 733. 56 Nursi, The Letters, p. 381. 57 Ibid., p. 527. 58 Ibid., pp. 513-14. 59 On the ecstatic utterances of Mans. ūr al-H .   allāj (858-922) and his place in Sufi history, see: Herbert W. Mason, Al-Hallaj (Routledge: Abingdon, 1995). 60 Quran, 55:29. 61 Quran, 11:107. 62 Quran, 30:54. 63 Quran, 30:50. 64 Quran, 36:83. 65 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 449. 66 Quran, 15:21. 67 Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, p. 24. 68 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 451. 69 The endlessness of the Divine words is alluded to in the Quranic verse 18:109 - Say: “If the ocean were ink (wherewith to write out) the words of my Lord, sooner would the ocean be exhausted than would the words of my Lord, even if we added another ocean like it, for its aid.” 70 Quran, 2:255. 71 Nursi, The Words, p. 731. 72 William C. Chittick, ‘The Five Divine Presences from Al-Qūnawī to Al-Qays. arī’ in The Muslim World, Vol. 72, No. 2 (1982), p. 111. 73 Quran, 113. 74 Cyril Glasse, The New Encyclopaedia of Islam, p. 143. 75 Ibid., p. 144. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., p. 146. 78 See Kojiro Nakamura, ‘Imām Ghazālī’s Cosmology Reconsidered with Special Reference to the Concept of “Jabarūt”’ in Studia Islamica, Vol. 80 (1994), p. 32. It should be noted here that Nursi’s understanding of the two realms of mulk and malakūt accords for the most part with that of Ghazālī, and so whatever is said here in reference to Ghazālī’s view will also apply to that of Nursi, unless indicated to the contrary. 79 Nakamura, op. cit., p. 32. 80 Ibid., p. 34. 81 Ibid., p. 39. 82 Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, p. 79. 83 Ibid., p. 84. 84 Quran, 16:40.

578

  Notes 85 That creation itself is in its entirety a veil over the ‘unseen’ is clear from Nursi’s teachings. See: The Words, p. 377. 86 On the five ‘planes of existence’ or ‘levels of life’ in Nursian thought, see: Nursi, The Letters, pp. 19-21. 87 The barzakh is the ‘isthmus’ or spatio-temporal bridge that is believed to exist between death and the hereafter. For an insightful, theo-mystical introduction to the concept of barzakh, see: Salman H. Bashier, Ibn al-‘Arabī’s Barzakh: The Concept of the Limit and the Relationship between God and the World (SUNY Press: Albany, 2004). 88 A full discussion of qadar or ‘Divine determining’ appears in Chapter Twelve. 89 For Nursi’s discussion of ‘ālam al-mithāl, see: The Letters, pp. 101-03. 90 Nursi, The Rays, p. 33. 91 Nursi, The Letters, p. 78. 92 Nursi, The Words, p. 106.

Chapter Three 1

The complexity of the historical debate among Muslim theologians and philosophers regarding causation is such that any attempt to summarise it in space as limited as this is bound to lead to over-simplification. Interested readers who wish to gain more insight may refer to Majid Fakhry’s Islamic Occasionalism (George Allen and Unwin: London, 1958). 2 Causality from the Ghazalian perspective is a relatively well-covered area of research, although articles are of vastly differing quality. One of the more accessible is: Stephen Riker, ‘Al-Ghazali on Necessary Causality’, in The Monist, vol. 79, no. 3, pp. 315-324. 3 The question of causation overlaps with a number of other discourses in Nursian natural theology such as Divine predetermination, free-will and the issue of justice. This chapter deals solely with the issue of the Divine authorship of all created acts and the dismissal of the notion that material causes or causal laws can have any role in the creative process. Emphasis is on Nursi’s portrayal of God as the sole Cause of all created beings, and tangential issues such as Divine determining, free-will and justice will be dealt with elsewhere, primarily in Chapter Twelve. 4 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 233. 5 Ibid., p. 232. 6 A serviceable definition of scientism is given by Michael Shermer as ‘a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science’. See: Michael Shermer, ‘The Shamans of Scientism’ in Scientific American, 2002, p. 35. 7 The Nursian concepts of ma‘nā-ye ismī and ma‘nā-ye harf ī represent the two diametrically opposed hermeneutical positions open to man as ‘reader’ of the cosmic narrative. For Nursi, the polarity is stark and simple: either one interprets the individual verses in the cosmic narrative as being ‘Other-indicative’ (ma‘nā-ye harf ī), namely as signs pointing to the Creator; or one disconnects them from their Divine origin and imposes on them a ‘self-referential’ meaning (ma‘nā-ye ismī), claiming that they indicate none other than their own existences. 8 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 233-34. 9 John Mackie, ‘Causes and Conditions’ in: Sosa & Tooley, Causation (Oxford: OUP, 2007), p. 33. 10 “T. abī‘a.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Brill Online, 2013. 11 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 234-35.

579

The Qur’an Revealed  12 On the teleological argument, see Neil A. Manson (Ed.), God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science (Routledge: London, 2003). Nursi does not employ classical arguments in the way that the medieval philosophers did, although he was clearly au fait with their history and usage. He also seems to be well aware that none of the classical arguments, at least in the way that they were articulated historically, is sufficient in itself to prove the existence of God as He is portrayed in revealed scripture. 13 Nursi’s approach also lends credence to the suggestion, made by Kenneth Gallagher, that the teleological arguments in general produce proofs that are, in fact, a priori. “Arguments such as the teleological are often thought of as more empirical than avowedly metaphysical attempts to prove the existence of God. In the way that these arguments are usually articulated, they seem to appeal to observable data in the universe in order to structure their premises: they start with the material – the objects of sense perception - and attempt to use that to reach the supra-material. However, there is reason to think that authentic proof of this sort is a priori. For the notion that the world is the expression of mind – the result of design – is not so much a conclusion of our thinking as its presupposition. The attempt to understand the world presumes that the world is understandable. If this presupposition required a supporting argument, we would not be able to find one: we cannot prove by argument that the world is intelligible because our premises would perpetually assume our conclusion. What happens in the teleological argument is that thought, turning completely outward to the external world, and in a state of forgetfulness that may be real or an example of ‘intellectual histrionics’, tries to ascertain whether things when brought to the methodological limit of thoughtlessness would exhibit any presence of mind. Can I think of that which is ultimately real as mindless? Such is the question – and its surface oddity is compounded by the other question it immediately generates: whence could I draw the assurance of the possibility of an affirmative answer to this question?” See: Kenneth T. Gallagher, ‘Remarks on the Argument from Design’ in The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 48, No. 1 (1994), p. 31. 14 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 235. 15 Modern physics has shown that ‘action at a distance’ does occur, but on a quantum level, where it is known as ‘quantum non-locality’. Quantum non-locality is a paradox that was described for the first time by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935. The paradox draws attention to a phenomenon predicted by quantum mechanics known as ‘quantum entanglement’, in which measurements on spatially-separated quantum systems can influence each other instantaneously. As a result, quantum mechanics violates the Einsteinian principle of locality or ‘local realism’, which states that changes which are effected on one physical system should have no immediate effect on another spatially-separated system. The ‘local realistic’ view of the world assumes that phenomena are separated by time and space, and that no influence can travel faster than the speed of light. Quantum non-locality, however, disturbs this view and proves our assumptions incorrect, revealing that there is a principle of holistic interconnectedness obtaining at the quantum level which is at odds with the localistic assumptions of traditional Newtonian physics. However, quantum non-locality does not prove that ‘signals’ travel ‘faster than light’. What it does show is that at the deepest levels of reality, the speed of light as a constraining factor is actually irrelevant on account of the fact that phenomena are connected instantaneously, regardless of distance. For a relatively straightforward exposition of quantum non-locality, see: Dipankar Home, Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Physics: An Overview from Modern Perspectives (Plenum Press: New York, 1997), pp. 191-270. On the impossibility of an infinite vertical hierarchy of causes, see: Stephen T. Davis, Hierarchical Causes in the Cosmological Argument in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 13-27.

580

  Notes 16 “If a being displays unity, this shows that it is has issued from a single source, from one hand” is a faithful English rendering of Nursi’s translation of the original Arabic Al-wāh. id lā yas.duru illā ‘an al-wāh. id, which can also be understood literally as “From that which is one/single, only one/ the single can issue forth.” As such, it forms the basis for the philosophical principle known as the Law of Singularity (qā’ida al-wāh. id), which states that it is impossible for more than one effect to issue from any single given cause. The ‘Law of Singularity’ posed problems for Muslim thinkers because it made it very difficult to explain how a multiplicity of effects – the world of created beings – could issue forth from a single Source – God – Whose absolute simplicity is taken as given. In an attempt to solve this problem, Greek thought posited quasi-divine intermediaries between God and creation, and the notion that God creates in this manner also percolated through to Muslim scholars. While theologians reject the notion of intermediaries, prominent Muslim philosophers defended it. For the classical Greek philosophers, the point of intermediaries was to separate God from the material world, which was seen as a degenerate level of existence and not something to which the Creator should be connected directly. The insistence on the exalted nature of the Creator was informed by a belief in intermediaries. Among these intermediary beings, the most important was the intellect (logos or nous). For the Jewish philosopher Philo, the intellect was the first creation of God. In the works of Plotinus, for example, these intermediaries are identified as ‘intellect’ and ‘soul’, while Muslim philosophers posited the existence of various other immaterial entities. The existence of these intermediaries would, it was thought, provide a workable solution to the problem of multiplicity and how it can be reconciled with the principle of Divine Unity. In his Treatise on Nature, Nursi appears quite ingeniously to turn this philosophical maxim completely on its head by reading the Arabic in a completely different, but equally valid way. Translating the first al-wāh. id as ‘that which exhibits unity’ and the second al-wāh. id as ‘the One’, Nursi transforms what to him is an unacceptable philosophical principle into an acceptable theological maxim. For more on the ‘Law of Singularity’, see: Andrey Smirnov, ‘Causality and Islamic Thought’ in Eliot Deutsch & Ron Bontekoe (Eds.), A Companion to World Philosophies (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1999), pp. 493-503. 17 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 235-36. 18 Nursi says that the ‘Second Way’ is that ‘things create themselves’ – a proposition which at first glance would suggest the notion that beings actually bring themselves into existence. However, in his discussion of the ‘Three Impossibilities’ which disprove the ‘Second Way’, the notion that a nonexistent being can somehow bring itself into existence is not broached. Nursi would probably have found the idea too outrageously irrational to contemplate, although the impossibilities it clearly involved has not prevented other ostensibly great minds from suggesting that spontaneous selfcreation is a distinct possibility. Recently, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has gone on record as saying that “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing; spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist...It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” One can only imagine how Nursi would have approached Hawking’s declaration. On the one hand, the universe is claimed to be ‘creating’ itself from ‘nothing’ yet on the other hand, the existence of a law of gravity is taken as given. But did the law of gravity precede the creation of the universe? And if it did, was the law of gravity also the result of spontaneous self-creation? See: Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (Bantam Press: London, 2010), p. 180. 19 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 236-37. 20 Ibid., p. 237. 21 Ibid., pp. 237-38.

581

The Qur’an Revealed  22 Ibid., p. 238. 23 Ibid., pp. 238-39. 24 Shaykh Jāmī has a similar argument: “If a single particular form (surah wahidah juz’iyah) is impressed (intaba’at) in many mirrors which differ with respect to being large or small, long or short, flat convex or concave, and so forth, then there can be no doubt that this form multiplies (yatakaththar) in accordance with the multiplicity of the mirrors, and that its impressions differ in accordance with the differences in the mirrors. Furthermore, this multiplicity [of impressions] does not impair the unity of the [original] form, nor does the appearance [of the form] in any one of these mirrors preclude it from appearing in the others. The True One (al-Wahid al-Haqq), ‘and God’s is the loftiest likeness,’ is thus analogous to the one form, whereas quiddities (al-mahiyat) are analogous to the many mirrors with their differing predispositions (isti’dadat). God appears in each and every individual essence (‘ayn) in accordance with that essence, without any multiplicity (takaththur) or change (taghayyur) occurring in His holy essence. Moreover, His appearing in accordance with the characteristics (ahkam) of any one of these individual essences does not prevent Him from appearing also in accordance with the characteristics of the others, as you have learned from the foregoing analogy.” See: Nūr al-dīn Rah. mān al-Jāmī, al-Durra al-fākhira, trans. Nicholas Heer (SUNY Press: Albany, 1979), p. 42. 25 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 239. 26 Ibid., pp. 239-40. 27 Ibid., p. 240. 28 Ibid., p. 241. 29 Ibid., p. 242. 30 Ibid., p. 243. 31 Ibid., pp. 243-44. 32 Ibid., p. 244. 33 Quran, 14:10. 34 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 244. 35 Ibid., pp. 244-45. 36 Newton’s mechanistic view of the cosmos would later go on to be applied to other phenomena as well. After all, if the universe was a vast machine that could be apprehended by reason with no need for recourse to revelation, why not see economics, history and politics through the same prism? If economics, history and politics were somehow mechanical and deterministic in nature, they could be explained without recourse to the Divine and manipulated in accordance with human aspiration. With the advent of the Enlightenment, this classical mechanistic view of the universe contributed to the rise of deism, which was founded on the belief that all phenomena are, in essence, rational and mechanistic, and as such they are explicable in wholly non-religious terms. Moreover, if the universe was amenable to rational explanation, the one who set it in motion initially must also be fathomable by human reason: if man was able to understand the workings of the universe, he must also be able to understand the workings of the ‘mind’ of God. And the upshot of this, of course, was that for the architects of the Enlightenment, religion itself had to fit in with the rational. The Newtonian paradigm thus led to the ‘domestication’ of God – to the shaping and explaining of the Divine in terms dictated not by revelation but by reason, with the former being subjugated to the latter. 37 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 245. 38 Ibid., p. 246. 39 Ibid.

582

  Notes 40 Ibid., pp. 246-47. 41 Ibid., p. 247. 42 Quran, 31:28. 43 Quran, 16:77. 44 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 248-51. 45 Ibid., p. 251. 46 Ibid., pp. 251-52. 47 Ibid., p. 252. 48 In his On Nature, for example, Gorgias (d. 380 B.C.) rejects the idea that if we examine our world, we must conclude that things exist. Moreover, he demonstrates that nothing exists, and that even if existence were to exist, it could not be known or its nature communicated to anyone. See: G. B. Kerferd, ‘Gorgias on Nature or That Which is Not’ in Phronesis, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1955), pp. 3-25. 49 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 252. 50 Empedocles (d. 435 B.C.) is a prime exponent of this line of thinking. 51 Ibid., p. 253. 52 Origination is usually translated as ibdā, which means ‘causing to begin’. But origination here is used in the sense of the ‘giving of (external) existence’ or ījād, which allows the creature to emerge from its previous state of contingency in the domain of Divine knowledge into the phenomenal world. This is very different from ‘creation’ or khalq, which is the transformation or development of forms within the phenomenal world, such as the ‘creation’ of an embryo from a sperm and an egg. 53 Quran, 2:117. 54 Quran, 3:47. 55 Quran, 16:40. 56 Quran, 19:35. 57 Quran, 36:82. 58 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 253.

Chapter Four 1

See, for example, Mulla Sadra, The Elixir of the Gnostics, transl. by William Chittick (Brigham Young University Press: Provo, 2003), pp. 44-46. 2 Quran, 30:50. 3 Quran, 2:255. 4 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 426-27. 5 Ibid., p. 427. 6 Ibid., p. 428. 7 Ibid., p. 429. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., pp. 429-30. 10 Quran, 23:80; 40:68; and 30:24. 11 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 430. 12 Quran, 51:58; 26:80 and 42:28. 13 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 430-31. 14 Ibid., p. 433. 15 Ibid.

583

The Qur’an Revealed  16 Ibid., pp. 433-34. 17 Ibid., p. 434. 18 Ibid., pp. 434-35. 19 See, for example, Chapter Two, pp. 142-43; Chapter Seven, 232-36; and Chapter Fourteen, p. 445. 20 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 431. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., p. 432. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., pp. 433-34. 25 The Nursian take on the concept of qadar, sometimes mistranslated as ‘fate’ but rendered into English by Nursi’s translator as ‘Divine determining’, is covered in considerable depth in Chapter Twelve. 26 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 435. 27 Ibid. 28 According to Reinhard Eichelbeck, it is impossible to distinguish between ‘dead’ and ‘living’ grain using chemical methods, and on the atomic level there is no absolutely no difference between grain and the flour which is made from it. A bag of wheat grains which are germinable, however, are alive, and will yield a whole field of wheat when sown. A bag of flour from milled - and thus dead – wheat grains, however, will produce nothing if planted. See: R. Eichelbeck, “All The Colours of the Rainbow in a Worm or: What is Life?” in Hans-Peter Durr, Fritz Albert Popp & Wolfram Schommers (Eds.), What is Life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2002), p. 2. 29 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 435. 30 Ibid., p. 436. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., pp. 436-37. 34 Divine Oneness is that which is inferred from the conclusion that the creator of a single entity such as a Damascus rose can only be one; Divine Unity is that which is inferred from the conclusion that the creator of the Damascus rose in John’s garden is the same as the creator of the Damascus rose in Ali’s garden. The terms ah. adiyya and wāh. idiyya thus refer to Divine Oneness within the framework of unity and multiplicity. Divine ah. adiyya is beyond all distinctive knowledge whereas Divine wāh. idiyya appears in the differentiated just as principal distinctions – such as the multiplicity of attributes – appear in Divine Oneness. The reader may refer back to Chapter One for a more detailed discussion of the different aspects of Divine Unity according to Nursi. 35 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 437. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., pp. 437-38. 38 Quran, 17:85. 39 See: Quran, 38:72. 40 Quran, 40:15. 41 Quran, 2:87 and 26:193. 42 One possible reason that rūh.  and nafs have often been conflated may well stem from the fact that, etymologically, both words are semantic cognates, connected with the idea of ‘breath’ and ‘wind’. On the distinction made between the two by the philosophers and the Sufis, see: Murteza

584

  Notes Bedir, ‘Interplay of Sufism, Law, Theology and Philosophy: A non-Sufi Mystic of 4th-5th/10th-11th Centuries’ in Alfonso Carmona Gonzalez (Ed.) El sufismo y las normas del Islam: Trabajos del IV Congreso Internacional de Estudios Juridicos Islamicos (Consejeria de Educacion y Cultura: Murcia, 2006),pp. 262-66. 43 Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam (SUNY Press: Albany, 1992), p. 233. 44 Nursi, The Words, p. 534. 45 Ibid., pp. 534-35. 46 Ibid., p. 535. 47 Ibid., p. 536. 48 Ibid., p. 535. 49 Ibid., p. 536. 50 On the indeterminate nature of light, see: S. M. Blinder, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (Elsevier Academic Press: Burlington, 2004), pp. 16-20. 51 Quran, 42:11. 52 Nursi, The Words, p. 537. 53 Ibid., p. 735. 54 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 331-32. 55 Murata, The Tao of Islam, p. 32. 56 For the angels as ‘messengers’, see: Quran, 7:37. 57 Sachiko Murata & William Chittick, The Vision of Islam (I. B. Tauris: 1994), pp. 89-90. 58 For an interesting, if brief, ‘neuro-theological’ account of Gabriel’s appearance to Muhammad, see: Peter Verhagen, Herman M. Van Praag, Juan José López-Ibor, Jr., John Cox & Driss Moussaoui (Eds.), Religion and Psychiatry: Beyond Boundaries (Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford, 2010), p. 553. 59 Quran, 37:164. 60 Quran, 8:9; 25:25; 37:1; 78:38; 89:22 and 4:97 provide but a few examples of the different ranks and functions of angels. 61 Quran, 39:37; 40:7; 69:17. 62 Quran, 2:177. 63 Nursi never clarifies precisely what he means by ‘spirit beings’ (rūh. ānīyāt), although it may be understood from the context of the passages in which he uses this term that it includes the spirits of dead human beings as well as the different ‘varieties’ of angel. 64 Nursi, The Words, p. 521. 65 Ibid., p. 522. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid., p. 523. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., p. 524. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., pp. 524-25. 73 Ibid., pp. 525-26. 74 Ibid., p. 526. 75 Ibid. 76 For an insightful introduction to the issue of the primacy of existence (wujūd) over essence (māhiyya), see: Ahmad Ahmadi, ’The fundamentality of existence or quiddity: a confusion between epistemology and ontology’ in Topoi, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2007), pp. 213-19.

585

The Qur’an Revealed  77 Nursi, The Words., pp. 526-27. 78 Ibid., p. 527. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., p. 528. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., pp. 529-30. 84 Ibid., p. 530. 85 Ibid. 86 Dawkins has coined the term ‘designoid’ to denote any living being which has the appearance of having been designed but which in fact is simply a product of the evolutionary process. See: Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Mariner Books: New York, 2005), p. 601. 87 See: F. Heylighen, F. (2003) ‘The science of self-organization and adaptivity’ in L. D. Kiel (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS Publishers: Oxford, 2003). 88 Nursi, The Words, p. 531. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid., pp. 531-32. 92 Ibid., p. 528. 93 Ibid., pp. 528-29.

Chapter Five 1 Quran, 51:56. 2 Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, pp. 23-24. 3 Quran, 51:57 - No Sustenance do I require of them, nor do I require that they should feed Me. 4 Nursi, The Words, pp. 86-87. 5 Ibid., pp. 139-41. 6 Quran, 33:72. 7 Quran, 2:30-34. 8 Nursi, The Words, p. 254. 9 Ibid., p. 558. 10 A workable definition of scientism is given by Michael Shermer as ‘a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science’. See: Michael Shermer, ‘The Shamans of Scientism’ in Scientific American, 2002, p. 35. 11 This, as the following passage shows, and as Nursi would presumably agree, would appear not only to close the door to future discussion, but to double-bolt it as well: “The first thing we must do in order to discuss the matter at all, of course, is to contrast the hypothesis of a creator with others supposedly competing with it. In thinking about this, we at once encounter two problems. First, the events we usually call instances of ‘creation’ are themselves natural processes, and this makes it a little difficult to get the intended contrast off the ground. Mary baking pies is a creative process, of a minor but nice sort; we don’t think any magic is involved there. The pie grows by purely natural processes…” See: Jan Narveson, “God by Design” in Neil A. Manson

586

  Notes (Ed.), God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science (Routledge, 2003), p. 90. [Italics added] 12 Said Nursi, Epitomes Of Light: Mathnawi al-Nuriya-The Essentials Of The Risale-i Nur (Gazelle Books: Lancaster, 1999), p. 323. 13 Nursi, The Words, p. 558. 14 Ibid., pp. 558-59. 15 Ibid., p. 559. 16 Quran, 91:9. 17 Quran, 95:4. 18 Nursi, The Words, p. 559. 19 Quran, 91:10. 20 Quran, 31:13. 21 Nursi, The Words, pp. 559-60. 22 Said Nursi, The Staff of Moses (Sözler Publications: Istanbul, 2006), p. 4. 23 The tree of t. ūbā (lit. ‘blessedness’) is a sacred tree of plenty that Muslims believe grows in Paradise. It is mentioned once in the Quran, in 13:29. 24 Nursi, The Words, p. 562. 25 Abū ‘Alī al-H .   usayn ibn ‘Abdullāh ibn Sīnā (980-1037), known to Western readers as Avicenna, is arguably the most renowned Muslim philosopher of the medieval period. For a concise introduction to his life and thought, see: Lenn E. Goodman, Avicenna (Cornell University Press: London, 2006). The renown of Abū Nas.  r Muh.  ammad ibn Muh.  ammad Fārābī (872-950) is not far behind that of Ibn Sīnā. For a concise and readable introduction to his life, works and legacy, see: Majid Fakhry, Al-Farabi, Founder of Islamic Neoplatonism: His Life, Works, and Influence (Oneworld Publications: Oxford, 2002). 26 The tree of zaqqūm is the antithesis of the tree of t. ūbā (see n. 23). Growing amidst the flames of Hellfire, it is believed to burn the stomachs of those who have no choice but to eat of its fruits. See: Quran, 44:43-46. 27 The Pharaoh in Muslim tradition is the archetypal despot and denier of God, and is positioned against Moses in the Quranic narrative of the freeing of the slaves from Egypt. Nimrod, believed in Muslim tradition to have been the arch-enemy of the patriarch Abraham, is emblematic of the idolatrous tyrant king and personification of power used for evil purposes. Shaddad, the king of the lost Arabian city of Iram of the Pillars (see Quran: 89:6-14) is also considered to represent monarchical tyranny and idolatry. 28 Nursi, The Words, pp. 562-63. 29 Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness., p. 29. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., pp. 29-30.

Chapter Six 1

The term wah. y here is being used in both a general and a particular sense: general in the sense of God’s self-revelation through creation and particular in the sense of his vouchsafing certain messages, through the medium of the spoken word, to chosen individuals from among the righteous.

587

The Qur’an Revealed  2 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 405-06. 3 Nursi, The Words, p. 70. 4 Ibid., p. 313. 5 In his exegesis of the opening chapter of the Quran, al-Fātih. a, he includes ‘speech’ as one of the seven attributes which are knowledge (‘ilm), will (irāda), power (qudra), sight (bas.ar), hearing (sam‘), speech (kalām) and life (h. ayāt). See: Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, p. 22. 6 Nursi, The Rays, p. 147. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Quran,42:11. 10 Nursi, The Rays, p. 147. 11 Ibid., pp. 147-48. 12 Quran, 18:109. 13 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 347. 14 See: Soren Stenlund, Language and Philosophical Problems (Routledge: London, 1990), p. 146. 15 Bede Rundle, Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2004), p. 169. 16 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 349. 17 Ibid. 18 Nursi, The Rays, p. 148. 19 Ibid. 20 Nursi, The Letters, p. 512. 21 Nursi, The Rays, p. 257. 22 The initial revelatory experience of Muhammad has Gabriel instructing him to ‘read’ (iqrā! ), which, interpreted creatively, can be understood as an entreaty to ‘read’ the creational signs (āyāt) as well as the revealed verses (āyāt) of the Quran. 23 Nursi, The Rays, p. 258. 24 Ibid., pp. 257-58. 25 Ibid., p. 258. 26 Nursi, The Words, p. 122.

Chapter Seven 1 Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, pp. 31-32. 2 Nursi, The Rays, p. 47. 3 Nursi, The Words, p. 146. 4 Quran, 91:8. It should be noted, however, that the word wah. y is also used by the Quran on a number of occasions to denote the kind of inspiration that falls short of actual revelation; see, for example, Quran, 6:91 and 16:68. 5 Nursi, The Words, p. 147. 6 Quran, 31:27. 7 Nursi, The Words, p. 147. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., pp. 147-48. 10 Ibid., p. 148. 11 Nursi, The Words, pp. 376-77.

588

  Notes 12 Ibid., p. 378. 13 Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, p. 57. 14 Although historically a distinction has been made in Arabic literature between rhetoric and eloquence, Nursi on occasion uses the two as though they were interchangeable, and it is only from the context of his discourse that one understands which of the two he has under consideration. On the Arab litterateurs and the distinction between rhetoric and eloquence, see: Husein AbdulRaof, Arabic Rhetoric: A Pragmatic Analysis (Routledge: London, 2006), p. 94. 15 Nursi, The Letters, p. 222. 16 Ibid., p. 223. 17 Ibid. 18 Quran, 10:38. 19 Nursi, The Letters, p. 225. 20 See: Abdul-Raof, Arabic Rhetoric, p. 58. 21 Nursi, The Words, p. 380. 22 For background on Musaylima, and an example of his ‘revelation’, see: Francis E. Peters, Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land (University Press: Princeton, 1994), pp. 89-91. 23 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 223-24. 24 Ibid., p. 224. 25 Ibid., pp. 219-20. 26 Ibid., p. 220. 27 Ibid. 28 On Jurjānī, see: Abdul-Raof, Arabic Rhetoric, pp. 47-48. 29 Ibid. 30 Quran, 21:46. 31 The word tanwīn or ‘nunation’ describes the addition of a final nūn (‫ )ﻥ‬to either an adjective or noun to show that it is fully declinable and syntactically indefinite. 32 Nursi, The Words, pp. 380-81. 33 Quran, 2:3. 34 The words min (from) and mā (what) elide in Arabic to become mimmā (from what). 35 Nursi, The Words, pp. 381-82. 36 Ibid., p. 382. 37 Ibid., pp. 382-83. 38 Kees Versteegh, Landmarks in Linguistic Thought III: The Arab Linguistic Tradition (Routledge: New York, 1997), pp. 58-59. 39 Vincente Cantarino, Arab Poetics in the Golden Age (Brill: Leiden, 1975), p. 46. 40 Quran, 57:1; 59:1; 61:1. 41 Quran, 17:44. 42 Nursi, The Words, p. 383. 43 Quran, 36:38. 44 Quran, 71:16. 45 Nursi, The Words, pp. 387-88. 46 Quran, 15:94. 47 Nursi, The Words, pp. 388-89. 48 Ibid., p. 389. 49 Quran, 3:154. 50 Nursi says that the tanwīn is also considered as a nūn (‫)ﻥ‬.

589

The Qur’an Revealed  51 Nursi, The Words, pp. 389-90. 52 Ibid., p. 390. 53 Ibid., p. 402. 54 Quran, 21:30. 55 Nursi, The Words, p. 404. 56 Quran, 36:38. The complete verse reads: And the sun runs its course to a place appointed; that is the decree of (Him), the Exalted in Might, the All-Knowing. 57 Nursi, The Words, pp. 404-05. 58 Quran, 2:5. 59 Nursi, The Words, p. 406. 60 Ibid. 61 Shabbir Akhtar, The Quran and the Secular Mind (Routledge: London, 2007), p. 159. 62 Nursi, The Words, p. 407. 63 Ibid., p. 407. 64 Ibid., p. 408. 65 Ibid., p. 410. 66 Quran, 11:44. 67 Quran, 91:11-15. 68 Quran, 21:87. 69 Nursi, The Words, pp. 206-07. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 See: ibid., pp. 416-26. 73 Abdol-Raof, op. cit., p. 58. 74 Ibid., p. 59. 75 Nursi, The Words, p. 198. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., p. 199. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., p. 200. In the Quran (7:143), Moses’s inability to comprehend the absoluteness of God is conveyed quite starkly: When Moses came to the place appointed by Us, and his Lord addressed him, He said: “O my Lord! show (Thyself ) to me, that I may look upon thee.” Allah said: “By no means canst thou see Me (direct); But look upon the mount; if it abide in its place, then shalt thou see Me.” When his Lord manifested His glory on the Mount, He made it as dust. And Moses fell down in a swoon. When he recovered his senses he said: “Glory be to Thee! to Thee I turn in repentance, and I am the first to believe.” 82 Quran, 39:32. 83 Nursi, The Words, p. 200. 84 Ibid., pp. 200-01. 85 Ibid., p. 201. 86 Ibid., pp. 201-02. 87 Ibid., p. 202. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid., p. 203. 90 Ibid.

590

  Notes 91 92 93 94 95

Ibid. Ibid., p. 204. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 204-05. See: S. Morris Engel, Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language: The Language Trap (General Publishing: Toronto, 1994), pp. 78-80. 96 The ‘late origin’ theory of Islam was one propounded by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook in Hagarism (CUP: Cambridge, 1977) and John Wansbrough in his Quranic Studies (OUP: Oxford, 1977). 97 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 410-11. 98 Ibid., p. 411. 99 Quran, 33:21. 100 Quran, 21:107. 101 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 411-12. 102 Ibid., p. 412. 103 Ibid., pp. 434-35. 104 Nursi, The Letters, p. 361. 105 Nursi, The Words, p. 243. 106 Ibid., p. 244. 107 H .  usayn al-Jisrī, al-Risāla al-H .   amīdiyya [Turk. trans. Manastirli Ismail Hakki], Istanbul 1308, 4 vols. 108 See, for example: D. B. Keldani, Muhammad in World Scriptures: No. 2 – The Bible (The Islamic Book Trust: Petaling Jaya, 2006). 109 Nursi, The Words, p. 244. 110 Ibid., pp. 244-45. 111 Ibid., p. 245. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., pp. 245-46. 114 Ibid., p. 246. 115 Ibid., pp. 246-47. 116 Ibid., p. 247. 117 Ibid., pp. 247-48. 118 Ibid., p. 248. 119 Ibid., p. 250.

Chapter Eight 1 Quran, 29:19-20. 2 Quran, 7:57. 3 See: Robert J. Higgs & Michael Braswell, An Unholy Alliance: The Sacred and Modern Sports (Mercer University Press: Macon, 2004), p. 43. 4 Hamid Naseem, Muslim Philosophy: Science and Mysticism (Sarup & Sons: New Delhi, 2001), p. 194. 5 See: Quran, 18:65-82. 6 Nursi, The Words, pp. 59-61. 7 Ibid., p. 61.

591

The Qur’an Revealed  8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., pp. 61-62. 11 Ibid. 12 Nursi, The Words, pp. 62-63. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., pp. 63-64. 15 Nursi says that this is an allusion to the ‘Preserved Tablet’ or lawh. -i mah. fūz. . The ‘preserved tablet’ is referenced in the Quran (85:22) and is traditionally understood to denote the ‘original’ form of the Quran before its ‘descent’ (nuzūl) in the form of revelation. There are, however, a number of different ways in which the term ‘Preserved Tablet’ has been understood. For a range of these views, see Daniel Madigan, “Preserved Tablet” in Jane Dammen McAuliffe et al. (Eds), Encyclopaedia of the Quran 5 Vols. (Brill: Leiden, 2001-06), Vol. 4, pp. 261-63. 16 Nursi, The Words, p. 64. 17 Ibid., p. 65. 18 Nursi explains that the ‘heads of offices’ in the allegory represent the prophets and the saints. 19 Nursi, The Words, pp. 65-66. 20 For an elaboration of this point, Nursi refers the reader to the ‘Eighth Truth’. 21 Nursi, The Words, p. 66. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. 67. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., pp. 67-68. 28 These arguments are weak from a practical point of view because they seldom convince anyone who is not already convinced, since they presuppose the existence of God. These arguments are demonstrations from cause to effect rather than from effect to cause, and if the cause is not established, trying to prove the effect is ultimately a rather pointless task. 29 Nursi, The Words, p. 74. 30 Ibid., pp. 75-76. 31 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Harper Collins: New York, 2001), pp. 38-39. 32 Ibid., p. 76. 33 Ibid., pp. 77-78. 34 See: Colin Turner, ‘Bediuzzaman and the Concept of Adl: Towards a Nursian Ontology of Divine Justice’ in Asian Journal of Social Science, Volume 38, Number 4 (2010), pp. 554-82. 35 Nursi, The Words, p. 77. 36 Ibid., p. 78. 37 Ibid., p. 79. 38 Ibid., p. 80. 39 Ibid., pp. 81-82. 40 Ibid., p. 82. 41 Ibid., p. 83. 42 Fazlur Rahman says that the whole tenor of the Quran is against intercession, although the Traditions support the notion. See: Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran (University of Chicago Press: London, 1989) p. 31. For a range of Sufi views on Muhammadan intercession,

592

  Notes see: Qamar Ul-Huda, Striving For Divine Union: Spiritual Exercises for Suhrawardi Sufis (RoutledgeCurzon: London, 2003), pp. 100-01. 43 Nursi, The Words, p. 83. 44 Ibid., p. 81. 45 The original Arabic of this ‘Divine saying’ or h. adīth qudsī is law lāka law lāka, mā khalaqtu alaflāka. Nursi cites the Sharh.  al-Shifā of ‘Ali al-Qārī and the Kashf al-Khafā of al-‘Ajlūnī as sources. See: Nursi, The Words, p. 83. 46 Nursi, The Words, pp. 83-84. 47 Ibid., pp. 84-85. 48 Ibid., p. 85. 49 Ibid., p. 85. 50 Nursi, The Words, pp. 86-88. 51 Ibid., p. 86. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., p. 87. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., p. 88-89. 56 Ibid., p. 89. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., pp. 89-90. 59 Ibid., p. 91. 60 ‘Compulsion’ here is a strong word and should not be understood as being constraint that issues from other than God himself. The fact that the Quran talks about God’s having ‘decreed upon Himself mercy’ (6:12) may serve as an indication of what may be understood as the necessarily ‘self-limiting’ nature of the Divine in this respect. 61 Ibid., p. 91. 62 While Nursi claims that unbelief such as this is deserving of eternal punishment, there are others who find the notion of everlasting punishment problematic. Much hangs, of course, on the definition of the word ‘eternal’, especially since one imagines the hereafter to run according to a notion of time that is very different to the ones operating in this world. For an interesting theological perspective on the possible finitude of hell, even for unbelievers, see: Jon Hoover, “Islamic Universalism: Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Salafi Deliberations on the Duration of HellFire” in The Muslim World, Vol. 99 (2009), pp. 181-201. 63 Nursi, The Words, p. 92. 64 Ibid., p. 93. 65 Quran, 30:50. 66 Nursi, The Words, p. 94. 67 Ibid., p. 95. 68 Ibid., p. 96. 69 Ibid., pp. 96-97. 70 Ibid., pp. 97-98. 71 Ibid., p. 99. 72 Ibid., p. 100. 73 Sören Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread (University Press: Princeton, 1957), p. 139. 74 Quran, 95:4-6. 75 Nursi, The Words, p. 101.

593

The Qur’an Revealed  76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., p. 102. 78 Ibid., p. 106.

Chapter Nine 1 Nursi, The Rays, p. 256. 2 Ibid., p. 98. 3 On the issue of ‘investigative belief ’ (īmān-i tah. qīqī), see: Said Nursi, Kastamonu Lahikası (Envar Publications: Istanbul. 1995), p. 18. 4 On the issue of taqlīd (imitative belief ) and the role of the intellect (‘aql), see: Fadlou Shehadi, Ghazali’s Unique and Unknowable God (E. J. Brill: Leiden,1964), pp. 54-58. 5 Nursi, The Letters, p. 382. 6 Ibid., pp. 383-84. 7 Nursi, Risale-i Nur Külliyatı, Vol. 1, p. 360. 8 Nursi, The Letters, p. 51. 9 Ibid., p. 50. 10 Quran, 49:14. 11 Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, Vol. 1, p. 360. 12 Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 1553-1554. For an analytical survey of the various theological and jurisprudential positions on this issue in classical Islam, see: Colin Turner, Islam without Allah? The Rise of Religious Externalism in Safavid Iran (Curzon Press, 2000), pp. 1-20. 13 Ibid., pp. 23-35. The belief/submission issue also provides a theoretical framework in which the phenomenon of nomocentrism – the expression par excellence of Muslim religious externalism – can be analysed and understood. Ghazālī was the first scholar of note to bemoan the semantic shifts which had contrived to divest words such as fiqh of their spiritual significance and turn them into designations for fard al-kifāya sciences that pander to the ego of the practitioner on the one hand and to the religious externalism of the masses on the other; Mullā S. adrā was another. Nursi’s elucidation of the īmān/islām dichotomy is a contemporary variation of this age-old theme. On Ghazālī and his approach to this issue, see: Turner, op.cit., pp. 25-31. Mullā S. adrā’s strictures on nomocentrism and the problem of religious externalism appear in his Persian treatise Sih Asl [Three Principles], a translation of, and commentary on, which is currently in preparation. 14 Quran, 95:4-6. 15 Nursi, The Words, p. 319. 16 Ibid., pp. 319-20. 17 Jayadvaita Swami, ‘How Much Are You Worth?’ in Back To Godhead, Vol. 13, No. 11 (1978). 18 Nursi, The Words, p. 320. 19 See Chapter Sixteen, pp. 528. 20 Nursi, The Words, p. 320. 21 Ibid., p. 321. 22 Quran, 2:257. 23 Quran, 24:35. 24 Nursi, The Words, p. 322. 25 Ibid., pp. 322-23. 26 Nursi, The Words, p. 323.

594

  Notes 27 Ibid., pp. 323-24. 28 Ibid., p. 324. 29 Ibid., pp. 324-25. 30 Ibid., p. 328. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., p. 329. 33 Ibid. 34 See: Quran, 23:14. 35 Nursi, The Words, p. 329. 36 For an explanation of this concept-pair, see Chapter 3, note 5. 37 Nursi, The Words, pp. 329-30. 38 Ibid., p. 333.

Chapter Ten 1 Quran, 51:56. 2 Quran, 2:277. 3 Quran, 4:57. 4 Quran, 5:9. 5 Quran, 22:18. 6 Quran, 3:83. 7 Quran, 2:116. 8 Quran, 17:44. 9 Nursi, The Words, pp. 361-62. 10 Ibid., pp. 362-63. 11 Ibid., p. 364. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., pp. 364-65. 14 Ibid., p. 365. 15 Ibid., pp. 365-66. 16 Ibid., pp. 366-67. 17 Nursi, The Words, p. 367. 18 ‘Abd al-Mannān ‘Omar, Dictionary of the Holy Quran (Noor Foundation: Hockessin, 2005), p. 355. 19 Nursi, The Rays, p. 209. 20 Nursi, The Words, p. 324. 21 Ibid., p. 330. 22 Nursi, The Words, pp. 328-29. 23 According to the verse Do they seek for other than the Religion of Allah?-while all creatures in the heavens and on earth have, willing or unwilling, bowed to His Will (Accepted Islam), and to Him shall they all be brought back (3:83), all creatures, including those humans who do not self-identify as believers, or who consciously reject the notion of a Creator, are deemed to be worshippers of God, largely because they are all acting in accordance with Divine will, even though they may not be acting in accordance with Divine pleasure. 24 Quran, 30:26. 25 Quran, 2:253.

595

The Qur’an Revealed  26 Quran, 4:27. 27 Quran, 6:74-79. 28 Nursi, The Words, pp. 228-29. 29 Ibid., p. 229. 30 Nursi, The Words, p. 230. 31 Nursi, The Rays, pp. 172-73. 32 Nursi, The Words, p. 52. 33 Ibid., pp. 326-27. 34 Ibid., pp. 15-16. 35 Ibid., p. 16. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., pp. 16-17. The Quranic verses referenced by Nursi are 2:60 and 21:69. 38 Ibid., p. 17. 39 Ibid. 40 Quran, 30:17-18. 41 Nursi, The Words, p. 51. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., p. 52. 44 Ibid., pp. 52-53. 45 Ibid., p. 53. 46 Ibid., p. 54. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., pp. 54-55. 49 Ibid., p. 55. 50 Ibid., pp. 55-56. 51 Nursi, The Words, p. 56. 52 Nursi, The Words, pp. 57-58. 53 Ibid., p. 58. 54 Quran, 65:3. 55 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 457-58. 56 Ibid., p. 458. 57 Ibid., p. 459. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., pp. 459-60. 60 Ibid., p. 460. 61 Ibid., pp. 461-62. 62 Ibid., p. 461. 63 See: William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Cosmology (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), p. 406. 64 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 462-63.

Chapter Eleven 1

596

For an insightful discussion on the spiritual significance of this possibly apocryphal ‘Tradition’, see: William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn Al-'Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (SUNY Press: Albany, 1989), pp. 344-46.

  Notes 2

The term h. anīf, traditionally understood by Muslims as referring to those denizens of the Arab peninsula who were monotheist in outlook prior to the revelation of the Quran, but neither Christian nor Jewish in denomination, is a much contested one. See: George C. Decasa, The Qur’ānic Concept of Umma and Its Function in Philippine Muslim Society (Pontificia Universita Gregoriana: Rome, 1999) pp. 115-21. 3 See: Colin Turner, Islam: The Basics (Routledge: Abingdon, 2011), p. 179. Junayd al-Baghdādī (830-910) was one of the most famous early Persian Muslim mystics. See: Cyril Glasse, The New Encyclopaedia of Islam, p. 243. 4 Turner, Islam: The Basics, p. 179. On Ruwaym, see: Jawid Ahmad Mojaddedi, The Biographical Tradition in Sufism: The t. abaqāt Genre from Al-Sulamī to Jāmī (Routledge: Abingdon, 2000), pp. 95-96. On Samnūn, see: Paul Losensky, Farid Ad-din 'At. t. ār’s Memorial of God’s Friends: Lives and Sayings of Sufis (Paulist Press: Mahwah, 2009), pp. 380-83. 5 Turner, Islam: The Basics, p. 179. 6 John Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (OUP: New York, 1998), pp. 24-25. 7 For a good introduction to the varied and complex doctrines of the ghulāt, see: Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat Sects (Syracuse University Press: New York, 1988). 8 Trimingham, op. cit., p. 6. 9 After Rūmī, Mus.lih.  al-Dīn Sa‘dī (d. 1292) and Shams al-Dīn H .    āfiz.  (d. 1389), both from Shiraz, are arguably the most celebrated Persianate Sufi poets in history. ‘Abd al-Rah.  mān Jāmī (d. 1492) is somewhat less renowned, both in Iran and in the West. For a very brief overview of the life and legacy all three, see: Sigfried J. de Laet (Ed.), History of Humanity: from the Seventh to the Sixteenth Century (UNESCO & Routledge: London, 2000), p. 371. For an introduction to the teachings of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 1273), see: William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (SUNY Press: Albany, 1983). 10 Nursi, The Letters, p. 507. 11 Ibid., pp. 507-08. 12 Ibid., p. 508. 13 Ibid., pp. 508-09. 14 ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jaylānī (1077-1166) was a H .    anbalī scholar active in Baghdad who, after his death, became the namesake and patron of one of the oldest and most respected Sufi brotherhoods, the Qādiriyya. Al-Jaylānī, also known as Gaylani in Turkish, appears to have been a formative figure in the development of Nursi’s spiritual awareness. 15 Nursi, The Letters, p. 409. 16 The ‘pond of kawthar’ is believed to be a sacred source of water in Paradise, and symbolises abundance, blessedness and eternal felicity. 17 Nursi, The Letters, p. 509. 18 The word taqwā, often mistranslated as ‘piety’, corresponds more readily to the idea of God-awareness. 19 A tekke is a building designed specifically for the gatherings of a Sufi brotherhood. 20 Nursi, The Letters, p. 510. 21 Ibid., p. 510. 22 Ibid., pp. 510-11. 23 Ibid., p. 511. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 The figure who appears in the Quran as a travel companion of Moses (18:65-82), and who is described there as ‘one from among Our friends to whom We have vouchsafed knowledge from

597

The Qur’an Revealed  Ourselves’, is generally thought to have been the enigmatic Khid.  r. See: Cyril Glasse, The New Encyclopaedia of Islam, pp. 257-58. Uways is the legendary Uways al-Qarānī, a Yemeni mystic and monotheist who is said to have lived during the time of Muhammad but never actually met him. See: Glasse, op. cit., p. 467. 27 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 511-12. 28 Ibid., p. 512. 29 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 512-13. 30 Nursi, The Letters, p. 309. 31 Ibid., p. 524. The tasbīhāt are a series of supererogatory invocations offered after each canonical prayer. 32 Quran, 53:32. 33 Quran, 59:19. 34 Quran, 4:79. 35 Quran, 28:88. 36 Nursi, The Letters, p. 525. 37 Ibid. 38 Quran, 20:115 - We had already, beforehand, taken the covenant of Adam, but he forgot: and We found on his part no firm resolve. 39 Quran, 4:79. 40 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 525-26. 41 Quran, 28:88. 42 Nursi, The Letters, p. 526. 43 Ibid., pp. 526-27. 44 The most famous example is perhaps that of Mans.ūr al-H .    allāj (858-922). See Chapter Two, n. 56. 45 Nursi, The Letters, p. 527. 46 Nursi, The Letters, p. 347. 47 Ibid., pp. 347-48. 48 Ibid., p. 348. 49 Ibid. 50 On the importance of ‘active supplication’ and ‘verbal invocation’, see: Nursi, The Words, pp. 326-27. 51 Nursi, The Letters, p. 348. 52 Quran, 25:77. 53 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 349-50. 54 Ibid., p. 350. 55 Ibid. 56 Quran, 25:77. 57 Quran, 40:60. 58 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 350-01. 59 Quran, 2:256.

Chapter Twelve 1 2 3

598

Quran, 15:21. Quran, 33:38. Quran, 18:29.

  Notes 4 On the Jabriyya, see: Watt, W. Montgomery. “D –  ˉ jabriyya.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. The Jabriyya have at times been confused with the Jahmiyya, whose theological views differ considerably. For an insight into Jahmite thought, see: Tilman Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology from Muhammad to the Present (Markus Wiener Publishers: Princeton, 2000), pp. 103-04. 5 http://www.naqshbandi.ca/pages/islam.php?id_article=191&language=English. Accessed 8 June 2012. 6 Ibn Abī Ya ‘lā, T. abaqāt al-H .  anābila (1:32) in the entry of Ah. mad ibn Ja`far al-Istakhrī. Cited by Haddad on http://www.naqshbandi.ca/pages/islam.php?id_article=192&language=English#NO TES. Accessed 8th June, 2012. 7 The mih. na or so-called ‘inquisition’ was initiated by the Caliph Ma‘mūn in 833 and consisted in the interrogation, sometimes under extremely harsh conditions, of various members of the scholarly elite or ‘ulamā on issues of theological orthodoxy. See: Nimrod Hurvitz, “The Mihna (Inquisition) and the Public Sphere” in Miriam Hoexter, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt & Nehemiah Levtzion (Eds.), The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies (SUNY Press: Albany, 2002), pp. 17-27. 8 See, for example: Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, pp. 79-84. 9 Quran, 6:59. 10 Quran, 2:117. 11 Nursi, The Words, pp. 483-84. 12 Ibid., p. 484. 13 Ibid., pp. 484-85. 14 Quran, 12:1-2. 15 Quran, 26:1-2. 16 Quran, 6:59. 17 Quran, 36:12. 18 Nursi, The Words, p. 571. 19 See, for example: The Flashes, p. 237; The Words, p. 485; and The Rays, p. 581. 20 Nursi, The Words, p. 485. 21 Ibid., pp. 485-86. 22 Ibid., p. 480. 23 See, for example: Nursi, The Rays, pp. 15-26. 24 Nursi, The Words, p. 481. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 For his argument, see: Ibid., pp. 481-82. 28 Nursi, The Words, p. 482. On the theologians al-Ash‘arī (d. 935) and Māturidi (d. 944), see: Andrew Rippin, Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (Routledge: Abingdon, 2005), pp. 84-87. 29 That Nursi had an albeit rather guarded preference for the Maturidite position comes across in his exegesis of the Fātih. a. See: Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, p. 81. 30 Nursi, The Words, p. 482. 31 Ibid. 32 See: F. C. T. Moore, ‘Rome Inferences and Structural Opacity’ in Mind, Vol. 99, No. 396 (1990), p. 601. 33 Moore refers to the paradox of Buridan’s ass, which, although it came later than the Ghazalian example of the identical dates, is the paradox that is nearly always referred to when the issue of equal choices is discussed. See: Ibid., pp. 604-05.

599

The Qur’an Revealed  34 Ibid., p. 605. 35 Nursi, The Words, pp. 482-83. 36 Ibid., p. 478. 37 On the two kinds of supplication – verbal (qawlī) and active (fi‘lī), see Chapter Eleven, pp. 357-58. 38 Nursi, The Words, pp. 478-79. 39 Ibid.. p. 479. 40 Ibid., p. 483. 41 Quran, 40:60. 42 Quran, 25:77. 43 Quran, 2:186. 44 Quran, 40:60. 45 Quran, 10:89. 46 Quran, 17:11. 47 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 142-43. 48 Nursi, The Words, p. 572. 49 On some of the contested theological and philosophical issues of qadar as the putative ‘sixth article of faith’, see: Sachiko Murata, ‘Good and Evil in Islamic Neo-confucianism’ in Anna Teresa Tymieniecka, The Passions of the Soul and the Metamorphosis of Becoming (Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, 2003), pp. 125-35. 50 Nursi, The Words, p. 477. 51 Ibid., pp. 479-80. 52 Ibid., p. 480. 53 Quran, 39:49. 54 Quran, 17:83. 55 Quran, 39:8. 56 Quran, 4:79. 57 Nursi, The Words, p. 477. 58 Ibid., p. 478. 59 For an interesting exposition of the ‘lazy argument’, see: Sarah Broadie, ‘From Necessity to Fate: a Fallacy’ in The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2001), pp. 21-37. 60 Ibid., p. 486. 61 Ibid., pp. 486-87. 62 Ibid., p. 483.

Chapter Thirteen 1 Quran, 39:2. 2 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 201. 3 For an introduction to Talcott Parsons and the functionalist approach, see: A. J. Trevino, Talcott Parsons Today: His Theory and Legacy in Contemporary Sociology (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: Oxford, 2001). 4 Johnson, Miriam M. Johnson, ‘Functionalism and Feminism: Is Estrangement Necessary?’ in Paul England (Ed.),Theory on Gender / Feminism on Theory (Aldine de Gruyter: New York, 1993), p. 115. 5 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 201.

600

  Notes 6 Quran, 11:29. 7 Quran, 5:99. 8 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 201-02. 9 Quran, 11:29. 10 Quran, 5:99. 11 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 202-03. 12 Ibid., pp. 201-02. 13 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 203-04. 14 Nursi, The Letters, p. 309. 15 Ibid., p. 310. 16 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 204. 17 Ibid., p. 208. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., p. 204. 20 According to a Prophetic Tradition, Nursi says, a five-hundred-year paradise will be given to everyone in Paradise. He explains how this can be understood by human reason as follows. “In this world everyone has his private and temporally limited world as broad as the world, the pillar of which is his life. He makes use of his world through his inner and outer senses. He says to himself, ‘The sun is my lamp, the stars are my candles.’ The existence of other creatures and animate beings in no way negates his ownership of these; on the contrary, they brighten and illumine his world. In the same way, although on an infinitely higher plane, in addition to the garden of each believer that contains thousands of palaces and houris, there is a private fivehundred-year paradise for everyone, apart from the general Paradise. He will benefit from this paradise and eternity through his senses and feelings, according to the degree of development they have reached. The fact that others share in the general Paradise in no way harms his ownership or benefit, but on the contrary strengthens these, and adorns that vast Paradise. Man in this world benefits from a garden lasting an hour, a spectacle lasting a day, a country lasting a month and a journey lasting a year, with his mouth, his ear, his eye, his taste and all his other senses. So too, in that realm of eternity, his sense of smell and touch, which in this transient world barely profit from a garden lasting an hour, will benefit as if from a garden lasting a year. The sense of sight and hearing which here barely profit from an excursion lasting a year will there be able to benefit from a five-hundred-year excursion in a manner fitting that realm, adorned from end to end. Every believer will benefit there according to his spiritual rank, and gain delight and pleasure through his senses that will expand and develop in relation to the reward he has earned in this world and the good deeds he has performed.” See: Nursi, The Flashes, p. 210. 21 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 209-10. 22 Ibid., p. 204. 23 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 204-05. 24 Ibid., p. 205. 25 Ibid., p. 206. 26 Quran, 25:72. 27 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 208-09. 28 Ibid., p. 211. 29 Quran, 8:46. 30 Quran, 2:41. 31 Quran, 12:53.

601

The Qur’an Revealed  32 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 212-13. 33 The alif, or the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, is similar to the number one in appearance. 34 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 214-15. 35 Ibid., p. 215. 36 The ‘Second Constitutional Era’ began following the Young Turk revolution of 1908 and the subsequent restoration of the constitutional monarchy by Sultan Abdülhamid II. 37 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 216. 38 Quran, 3:185. 39 Quran, 39:30. 40 Ibid., pp. 216-17. 41 Ibid., p. 217. 42 Quran: 2:41. 43 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 218. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., pp. 218-19. 46 Ibid., p. 219. 47 Ibid., p. 220. 48 Nursi, The Rays, p. 303. 49 Ibid., p. 297. 50 Quran, 49:10. 51 Quran, 41:34. 52 Quran, 3:134. 53 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 306-07. 54 Nursi, The Letters, p. 307. 55 Ibid., pp. 307-08. 56 Ibid., p. 308. 57 Quran, 6:164. 58 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 308-09. 59 Ibid., p. 310. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., pp. 310-11. 62 “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Matthew, 7:3). 63 Nursi, The Letters, p. 311. 64 Quran, 25:72. 65 Quran, 64:14. 66 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 309-10. 67 Quran, 2:178. 68 Michael McCullough, Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct ( Josey Bass: San Francisco, 2008), p. xviii. 69 Cited in: Stephen Reicher & Nick Hopkins, Self and Nation: Categorization, Contestation and Mobilization (SAGE Publications: London, 2001), p. 184. 70 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 312-13. 71 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 205-06. 72 Ibid., pp. 311-12. 73 Ibid., p. 313.

602

  Notes 74 Ibid., p. 315. 75 Ibid., p. 313. 76 The Sipkan is a Yezidi Kurish tribe. Sections of the Hasanan and the Haydaran tribes participated in the Shaykh Said revolt of 1925. See: Martin van Bruinessen, ‘Popular Islam, Kurdish Nationalism and Rural Revolt: The Rebellion of Shaikh Said in Turkey (1925)’ in Janos M. Bak & Gerhard Benecke (Eds.), Religion and Rural Revolt (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 1984), pp. 281-95. 77 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 313-14. 78 Quran, 49:10. 79 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 314-15. 80 Quran, 49:10. 81 Nursi, The Rays, p. 337. 82 Nursi, The Words, p. 421.

Chapter Fourteen 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Agape is a form of love that is unconditional and voluntary, and is often equated with God’s love for man and for the selfless love of the human soul for others ; eros is equated with passionate love, longing and sexual desire; philia is love of friends, family and community; storge denotes parental love for a child; and xenia refers to the kind of solicitous hospitality shown to guests. See: Michele E. Paludi (Ed.), The Psychology of Love (Praeger Publishers: New York, 2012), p. xviii. In Sufism, various classifications of divine love have been formulated. See, for example: Binyamin Abrahamov, Divine Love in Islamic Mysticism (RoutledgeCurzon: London, 2003). Quran, 51:56. Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, p. 24. Nursi, The Letters, p. 353. Nursi, The Letters, p. 111. Nursi, The Flashes, p. 432. ‘Abd al-Malik b. Yūsuf al-Juwaynī (1025-85) was an Ash’arite theologian whose theoretical discussions of philosophical issues contributed significantly to the development of early medieval Muslim philosophy. Abrahamov, op. cit., p. 15. Ibid., p. 16. Nursi, The Letters, p. 111. Nursi, The Words, pp. 652-53. Nursi, The Flashes, p. 89. Ibid., p. 90. Ibid., pp. 30-31. Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness, pp. 23-24. Nursi, The Letters, p. 266. Nursi, The Flashes, p. 299. For a lengthier explanation of the Nursian concept pair of ‘self-referential’ and ‘Other-indicative’, see p. 579 n.7. Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 184-85. Nursi, The Words, p. 368. Nursi, The Letters, pp. 49-50.

603

The Qur’an Revealed  23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Nursi, The Flashes, p. 373. The Quranic verse referenced by Nursi is 25:43. Nursi, The Rays, pp. 24-25. Nursi, The Words, p. 368. Ibid., p. 369. Ibid., pp. 367-69. Ibid., p. 369. The Quranic verse referenced is 3:31. Ibid., p. 668. Ibid. Quran, 17:23. Nursi, The Words, pp. 668-69. Ibid., p. 669. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 670. Ibid. Ibid., p. 671. See, respectively, Chapters Ten and Eleven. Nursi, The Words, pp. 671-72. Ibid., p. 673. Ibid., p. 674. Ibid. I have taken the liberty of changing the original ‘wives’ in this passage to ‘spouses’. Quran, 17:23. Nursi, The Words, p. 674. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 674-75. Ibid., p. 675. Ibid. Quran, 28:88. Ibid., p. 676. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 677-78. Ibid., p. 678. Ibid. Quran, 76:19. Nursi, The Words, pp. 678-79. Quran, 15:47. Nursi, The Words, p. 679. Ibid., pp. 679-80. Ibid., p. 680. Ibid., pp. 680-81.

Chapter Fifteen 1 Aristotle, The Athenian constitution: the Eudemian ethics; On virtues and vices, trans. Harris Rackham (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 1935), p. 493. 2 Quran, 35:28.

604

  Notes 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

The Revival of the Sciences of Religion (Ih. yā ‘ulūm al-dīn) is regarded by many Muslims as arguably the greatest readily accessible work of Muslim spirituality, and one which has, for centuries, been the most read work after the Quran in the Muslim world. The Ih. yā is divided into four parts or ‘quarters’, each containing ten chapters. The first part deals with knowledge and the practical requirements of religion, such as ritual purity, prayer, charity, fasting, pilgrimage, recitation of the Quran and so on.; the second concentrates mostly on man and society, covering issues such as etiquette relating to eating, marriage, earning a living, friendship and the like.; and parts three and four are dedicated to the inner life of the soul and discuss first the vices that man must battle against in himself and then the virtues that he must strive to achieve. Richard R. Osmer, Practical Theology: An Introduction (William B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2008), p. 4. Nursi, The Letters, p. 431. Nursi, The Words, p. 158. Ibid., pp. 158-59. Ibid., pp. 159-60. Ibid., p. 160. Nursi, The Flashes, p. 287. Ibid., pp. 287-88. Ibid., p. 288. Niyazi Misri (1618-94) was the son of a Naqshbandi Sufi who himself became affiliated to the Halveti order, succeeding the Halveti shaykh Ummi Sinan and opening his own tekke in Bursa in 1670. See: M. D. Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (OUP: Oxford, 2008), p. 115. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 288-89. Ibid., p. 289. Ibid. Ibid., p. 290. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 290-91. Ibid., p. 291. Ibid. Ibid., p. 292. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 292-93. Ibid., p. 293. Ibid., pp. 294-95. Ibid., p. 295. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 296. There is some dispute over whether this is actually a ‘canonical’ h. adīth. It is, however, a saying that is a staple of all Sufi and mystical thought in the Muslim tradition. Quran, 73:17. Quran, 3:173. Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 299-300. Ibid., p. 301.

605

The Qur’an Revealed  36 Quran, 17:23-24. 37 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 302. 38 ‘Eyyup Sultan’ is Abū Ayyūb al-Ans. ārī (d. 674), a companion of the Prophet from the Medinese tribe of Khazraj. His renown rests largely on his participation in the siege of Constantinople during the reign of Mu‘āwiyya and his subsequent burial there. A shrine complex grew up around his tomb and is now an important place of pilgrimage for Muslims both in Turkey and beyond its borders. 39 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 302. 40 Ibid., p. 303. 41 Ibid., pp. 303-04. 42 Reynold A. Nicholson, Rumi: Poet and Mystic (George Allen & Unwin: London, 1973), p. 39. 43 Abdurrahman was the son of Nursi’s eldest brother, Abdullah. Born in Nurs in 1903, Abdullah joined his uncle in Istanbul after World War I and published a short biography of him. He died in Ankara, where he is buried. 44 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 304-05. 45 Quran, 6:74-79. 46 Quran, 6:76. 47 The concept pair of ‘Other-indicative’ and ‘self-referential’ is discussed at greater length in Chapter Three. 48 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 305-06. 49 Quran, 22:73. 50 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 306-08. 51 Ibid., p. 309. 52 Ibid., p. 310. 53 Ibid., pp. 310-11. 54 Ibid., p. 311. 55 Quran, 28:88. 56 Quran, 9:129. 57 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 311-12. 58 Ibid., p. 313. 59 Ibid., p. 314. 60 Quran, 3:173. 61 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 321. 62 Ibid., p. 322. 63 Ibid., p. 324. 64 Ibid., p. 325. 65 Quran, 24:35. 66 Ibid., pp. 325-26. 67 Quran, 21:83. 68 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 21. 69 Ibid., p. 22. 70 Quran, 6:125. 71 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 22-23. 72 Ibid., p. 23. 73 Ibid., p. 24. 74 Ibid., p. 25.

606

  Notes 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Ibid. Ibid., p. 26. Ibid., pp. 26-27. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., pp. 27-28. Ibid., p. 28. Nursi, The Words, p. 161. Ibid., pp. 161-62. Ibid., p. 162. Ibid. Cited in: S. ukran Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (SUNY Press: New York, 2005), pp. 258-60. 86 Nursi, The Words, pp. 162-63. 87 Ibid., pp. 163-64. 88 Ibid., p. 165. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., pp. 165-66. 91 Ibid., p. 166. 92 Nursi, The Letters, p. 97. The Quranic verse referenced by Nursi is 2:155-6. 93 Quran, 56:17; 76:19. 94 Nursi, The Letters, p. 97. 95 Ibid., p. 98. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid., pp. 98-99. 98 Ibid., p. 99. 99 Ibid. 100 Quran, 40:12. 101 Quran, 2:156. 102 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 99-100. 103 See: Paul Davies, Romanticism and Esoteric Tradition (Lindisfarne Books: Hudson, NY, 1998), p. 157. 104 L. Bouckaert, H. Opdebeeck & L. Zsolnai, ‘Why Frugality?’ in L. Bouckaert, H. Opdebeeck & L. Zsolnai (Eds.), Frugality: Rebalancing Material and Spiritual Values in Economic Life (Peter Lang International Publishers: Bern, 2008), pp. 3-4. 105 Ibid., p. 4. 106 Quran, 7:31. 107 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 189. 108 Ibid., p. 190. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid., p. 191. 111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 On al-Jīlānī, see Chapter Eleven, n. 14. 114 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 191. 115 Ibid., p. 192. 116 Quran, 51:58.

607

The Qur’an Revealed  117 Quran, 11:6. 118 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 192-93. 119 Ibid., p. 193. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid., pp. 194-95. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid., p. 196. 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid., pp. 196-97. 127 Ibid., p. 197. 128 Ibid., p. 198. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid., pp. 198-99.

Chapter Sixteen 1 Nursi, The Words, p. 663. 2 The term first appears in the Dictionary of the Academie Francaise in 1798. On the origins of the word ‘civilization’ in eighteenth-century France, see: Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations (Lane: New York, 1994), pp. 3-8. 3 One of the foremost champions of the notion of the German ‘Urvolk’ – the primordial people distinguished even among the larger family of Germanic peoples by their greater ‘purity of descent’ was the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), who outlined this thesis in a series of lectures entitled Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation). See: Tuska Benes, In Babel’s Shadow: Language, Philology, and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 2008), pp. 113-14. 4 Indeed, Webster’s Dictionary defines civilization in terms of culture and culture in terms of civilization. And Freud, for example, called his book Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, but offered no objections when his English translator opted for Civilization and its Discontents rather than Culture and its Malaise, which is a far closer approximation of the original German. 5 For the definitive work on this concept, see: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities (Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick, 2002). 6 Syed Farid Alatas, ‘An Agenda for Nursi Studies: Towards the Construction of a Social Theology’ in Journal of Asian Social Studies, Vol. 38, No. 4 (2010), p. 526. 7 Ibid. 8 Nursi, The Words, p. 501. 9 Abū Nas. r Muh. ammad al-Fārābī, El-Medinet’ul-Fadila transl. Ahmet Arslan (Kültür Bakanlığı: Ankara, l990), pp. 69-70. 10 Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are categories devised by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies for two basic types of social relationship. Gemeinschaft relationships are mutually dependent and caring, with people relating to one another because they are kin, because they live in a particular place or because they are like-minded and have common goals. Interpersonal relationships of the Gemeinschaft variety are communal, close, informal and are based on cooperation. Gesellschaft relationships, however, are contractual: people relate to one another solely because it is practical to do so. Gesellschaft interpersonal relationships are objective, formal and fuelled by pragmatic

608

  Notes considerations. Those entering into them are independent individuals who may even distrust those with whom they enter into a relationship, and do so only in order to pursue a particular goal. See: Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Society (David & Charles: Newton Abbot, 2002), pp. 33-35. 11 Nursi, The Words, p. 268. 12 Ibid., p. 273. 13 Ibid., pp. 337. 14 Ibid, pp. 336-37. 15 Nursi, The Rays, pp. 300-01. 16 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 159-60. 17 On Namık Kemal, see Chapter Seventeen, n. 13. Arguably the most useful introduction to Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghāī as a political thinker is: Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamal Ad-Din “Al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (UCLA Press: Berkeley, 1972). 18 Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey, pp. 56-58. 19 Ibid., pp. 53-54. 20 Ibid., p. 55. 21 Ibid., p. 48. 22 Ibid. 23 On the Medresetü’z Zehra, see: Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey, pp. 101-05 & 107-08. 24 Ibid., pp. 45-46. 25 Nursi, The Words, p. 750. 26 The emergence of the ‘New Said’ came together with a personal vow made by Nursi to dissociate himself from politics and political life; this is discussed at great length in Chapter Seventeen. 27 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 160. 28 Nursi, The Words, p. 748. 29 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 160. 30 Nursi, The Words, p. 420. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., p. 421. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., p. 422. 35 For a good working definition of ‘scientism’, see: Chapter Three, n. 6. 36 ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’ is a line from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H, and, while it predates Darwin, has been adopted by some as a phrase which connotes natural selection. ‘Nasty, brutish and short’ is the epithet used by the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan to describe the life of humans in what he called a ‘state of nature’. 37 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 162-63. 38 Quran, 13:14. 39 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 163-64. 40 Ibid., pp. 160-61. 41 Ibid., p. 161. 42 Nursi, The Words, p. 663. 43 Ibid. 44 Nursi, The Words, pp. 770-71. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid.

609

The Qur’an Revealed  47 Ibid., pp. 771-72. 48 Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Penguin Books: London, 2005). 49 Nursi, The Words, pp. 745-47. 50 Ibid., pp. 747-48. 51 Ibid., p. 561. 52 Nursi, The Words, pp. 748-49.

Chapter Seventeen 1

See: Vernon Van Dyke, ‘The Optimum Scope of Political Science’ in J. C. Charlesworth, A Design for Political Science: Scope, Objectives, and Methods (American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1966), p. 2. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Adrian Leftwich (Ed.), What is Politics? (Polity Press: Cambridge, 2004), pp. 1-2. 6 Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics ( John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 2007), p. 208. 7 Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (World Publishing: Cleveland, 1958), p. 7. 8 Leftwich, op. cit., p. 1. 9 Ibid., p. 2. 10 The concept of shūrā or ‘consultation’ is actually a pre-Islamic one, and is referenced by the Quran in the context of the Queen of Sheba’s consultation with her advisors; many modern Muslim thinkers have interpreted the term as possibly foreshadowing the notion of consultative democracy. The practice of bay‘a or ‘pledge of allegiance’, characterised in pre- and post-Islamic societies by the ritual handclasp, has also been seen as a symbol of the proto-democratic nature of early Muslim society. For a ‘liberal Islamic’ view of the compatibility of Islam and democracy which invokes the concept of shūrā as its underpinning, see: Sadek J. Sulaiman, ‘Democracy and Shura’ in Charles Kurzman (Ed.), Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (OUP: Oxford, 1998), pp. 96-100. 11 On Nursi’s allegedly apolitical stance, see: Zeynep Kuru & Ahmet Kuru, ‘Apolitical Interpretation of Islam: Said Nursi’s Faith-Based Activism in Comparison with Political Islamism and Sufism’ in Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2008), pp. 99–111. 12 Cited in: Vahide, op. cit., p. 21. 13 Namık Kemal (1840-88) was, according to sociologist Niyazi Berkes, the ‘first thinker to discuss the problems faced by the Muslims according to a coherent intellectual system’. For this and other insights into Kemal’s influence on reformism and the Constitutionalist movements, see: Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Hurst & Co. Publishers: London, 1998), pp, 208-22. 14 Said Nursi, Münâzarat (Sözler Publications: Istanbul. 1977), p. 15. 15 Vahide, op. cit., p. 54. 16 Ibid., p. 53. 17 On Nursi’s involvement with the CUP and the Ittihad-i Muhammadiya, see: Vahide, op. cit., pp. 51-77. 18 Vahide, op. cit., p. 37. Major Enver Bey (1881-1922) and Adjutant Major Niyazi Bey (1873-1912) were the principal leaders of the military insurrection in Macedonia during the later stages of the Young Turk Revolution.

610

  Notes 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 172. 21 Ibid., p. 241. 22 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 81-82. 23 On Shaykh Said and the 1925 revolt, see: Robert Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880-1925 (University of Texas Press: Austin, 1991). 24 Nursi, The Rays, pp. 385-86. 25 Ibid., p. 386. 26 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 63-64. 27 Ibid., p. 64. 28 Ibid., pp. 64-65. 29 Ibid., p. 65. 30 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 65-66. 31 Ibid., pp. 66-67. 32 Vahide, op. cit., p. 221. 33 Ibid., p. 223. 34 For an overview of the post-1923 history of the Republican and Democratic parties in Turkey, see: William Hale, The Political and Economic Development of Modern Turkey (Croom Helm Ltd: Beckenham, 1981). 35 Adnan Menderes (1899-1961) was one of the founders of the Democratic Party in the midForties and the first democratically elected prime minister of Turkey. Menderes served for ten years as PM and was executed by the military junta which came to power following the coup of May 1960. 36 Vahide, op. cit., p. 307. Celal Bayar (1883-1986) was the third president of the Turkish Republic, serving between 1950 and 1960. 37 Vahide, op. cit., p. 324. 38 Ibid., p. 242. 39 Nursi, The Rays, p. 384.

Chapter Eighteen 1 Ah. may al-Bayhaqī, Kitāb al-zuhd (Dār al-Jinān: Beirut, 1987), p. 165. 2 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 144. 3 According to at least one Western scholar, those Muslim scholars who believe that the time for militant or military jihād is passed are conspicuous by their absence. “In reading Muslim literature - both contemporary and classical - one can see that the evidence for the primacy of spiritual jihād is negligible. Today it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non-Western language (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu), would ever make claims that jihād is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihād . Such claims are made solely by Western scholars, primarily those who study Sufism and/or work in interfaith dialogue, and by Muslim apologists who are trying to present Islam in the most innocuous manner possible. Presentations along these lines are ideological in tone and should be discounted for their bias and deliberate ignorance of the Muslim sources and attitudes toward the subject.” See: David Cook, Understanding Jihād (University of California Press: Berkeley, 2005), pp. 165-166. Nursi, it would thus appear, is an exception. 4 The Quran confirms that man is born to struggle. For example, 84:6 - O thou man! Verily thou art ever toiling on towards thy Lord- painfully toiling,- but thou shalt meet Him.

611

The Qur’an Revealed  5 A few notable examples are Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (Phoenix: London, 2004); Reuven Firestone, Jihād: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (OUP: New York, 2002); and Roger Crowley, 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West (Hyperion Books: New York, 2005). 6 Abdul Mannan Omar, Dictionary of the Holy Qur’an (Noor Foundation International: Hockessin, 2005), p. 107. 7 See, for example: Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an: Translation and Commentary (Islamic Propagation Centre International: Birmingham, n.d.), p. 444, n. 1270. 8 Cook, Understanding Jihād, p. 109. 9 Quran, 29:6. 10 Quran, 9:44. 11 Quran, 9:81. 12 Quran, 9:86. 13 Quran, 9:88. 14 Quran, 2:216. 15 Quran, 4:77. 16 Quran, 49:15. 17 Louay Fatoohi, Jihād in the Qur’an (Luna Plena Publishing: Birmingham, 2009), p. 26. 18 See, for example, Quran 9:81 and 49:15. 19 See n. 1. 20 ‘Alī b. ‘Uthmān al-Hujwīrī, The ‘Kashf al-Mahjūb’: the Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism by alHujwiri, trans. R A Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1911), pp. 200-201. 21 One example is Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292-1350), a student of the redoubtable Ibn Taymiyya. See: Johannes J G Jansen, The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East (New York: Macmillan, 1986), p. 22. 22 See: John Herlihy, Borderlands of the Spirit (World Wisdom: Bloomington, 2005), p. 124. 23 See: John Renard, “Al-Jihād al-Akbar: Notes on a Theme in Islamic Spirituality” in The Muslim World, Vol. 78 (1988), pp. 225-42. 24 Emile Tyan, “Djihād” in EI2. 25 Sufyan al-Thawri (died c. 780) is an example. See: Roy Parviz Mottahedeh & Ridwan alSayyid, “The Idea of the Jihād in Islam before the Crusades” in Angeliki E. Laiou & Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Eds.), The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001), p. 25-26. 26 Ibid. 27 Nursi, The Letters, pp. 59-60. 28 Said Nursi, Kaynakli, Indeksli Risale-i Nur Külliyati: İşaratül I’caz, Mesnevi Nuriya, Barla Lahikasi, Kastamonu Lahikasi, Emirdağ Lahikasi, Tarihçe-i Hayat ve değerleri, 2 vols. ( Nesil Yayinlari: Istanbul, 1994), Vol. 2, p. 1691. 29 Said Nursi, The Damascus Sermon (Sözler Publications: Istanbul, 1996), p. 78. 30 Ibid. 31 See: Şükran Vahide, “Jihād in the Modern Age: Bediuzzaman’s Interpretation of Jihād” in The Third International Symposium on Bediuzzaman Said Nursi: the Reconstruction of Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (Sözler Publications: Istanbul, 1995), p. 129. 32 Quran, 2:256. 33 Nursi, The Rays, pp. 289-90.

612

  Notes 34 The hijrī calendar is a lunar calendar used in many Muslim countries. It has twelve lunar months totalling 354 or 355 days in all. It is called the hijrī calendar in honour of the Prophet’s hijra (migration) from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD, which is its ‘year one’. The Rumi calendar is the solar Ottoman calendar, based on the Julian calendar but also starting from 622 AD. 35 See: Edward Mead Earle, ‘The New Constitution of Turkey’ in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 1 (1925), pp. 73-100. This contains a full English translation of the 1924 Constitution as it was adopted, prior to any amendments. 36 Nursi, The Flashes, p. 144. 37 Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey, p. 242. 38 Nursi, The Flashes, pp. 143-44.

613

Index

Afghāni, Jamāl al-Dīn, 519, 540, 541 ‘ālam al-ghayb (the ‘unseen’ or ‘hidden’ realm), 84, 85 ‘ālam al-jabarūt(realm of power), 88, 89, 90 ‘ālam al-mulk(realm of the dominion), 31, 88, 89, 90, 91-92, 93, 154, 156, 159, 161, 163, 171, 305 ‘ālam al-malakūt(realm of the inner realities), 86, 89, 90, 92, 153, 171 ‘ālam-i hāhūt(realm of ‘He-ness’), 87, 88 ‘ālam-i lāhūt(realm of divinity; realm of the relatively absolute), 87, 88 ‘ālam-i mithāl(the imaginal realm), 88, 89, 92, ‘ālam-i nāsūt(the realm of humanity), 88 ‘ālam al-shahāda (the ‘seen’ or ‘visible’ realm), 52, 69, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 305 ‘Alī b. Abī T. ālib, 52, 340 angels (malā’ika), 156-172; ; and causation, 170172; and the glorification of God, 166-170; as ‘bearers of the Divine names’, 171; as ‘representatives of cosmic worship’, 166-170; as article of faith, 156; in Muslim tradition, 156; in the Quran, 156-157; life as proof of existence of, 158-163; universality of belief in, 163-165 Anselm, St., 24 Aquinas, Thomas, 10, 22, 573 n.32 ; ‘argument from harmony’ of, 107 argument from contingency 11, 14-15 argument from design, 102-104

Ash‘arī, Abū al-H .  asan, 19, 379, 572 n.24 Ash‘arites, 95, 364, 433 al-asmā al-h.  usnā. See: beautiful names of God Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal), 543, 544, 555 beautiful names of God (al-asmā al-h.  usnā), 22, 52, 178, 232, 267 beings, created (kā’ināt), 55-94; and ‘relative truths’, 63-64; and ‘unity of existence’ (wah. dat al-wujūd), 58, 71-81; and apparent opposites, 64-68; and tanzīh/tashbīh, 6062; as mirrors to the Divine, 57-59; based on the Divine Names, 59; contingency of, 61; continuous creation of, 81-84; Divine sovereignty and, 57-59; ephemerality of, 61-62; gradation (tashkīk) of existence of, 68-70; pure goodness of, 70-71; rationale for existence of, 55-56; relationship with Divine jamāl (beauty) and jalāl (glory), 65-68 belief (īmān), 283-300; and freedom of choice, 284; and submission (islām), 285-286; as connection to God, 286-288; as light, 289290; as strength through acceptance of impotence (‘ajz), 292-295; as trust (tawakkul), 291-292; consequences of, 295-300; pillars of, 283-284 brotherhood (ukhuwwa), 420-432; and enmity, 420-422, 426-428; and envy, 423-424; and guilt by association, 422-423; as a defence

615

Index  against external enemies, 420-432; on neutralizing enmity, 424-426; partisanship, 428-430 Burrell, David, 10 causation, 95-131; and ‘Divine determining’ (qadar), 126; and continuous creation, 130; and creatio ex nihilo, 99, 128-129; and creational harmony, 107-108; and ibdā and inshā(origination and composition), 129-130; and laws of nature, 116-119; and materialism, 96-98; and the ‘argument from design’, 102104; Aristotelian notion of, 99; Ash‘arite views on, 95-96; Divine unity as argument against, 114-115, 119-123; Ghazālī on, 95; hierarchical, 111; infinite causal regress, 106; nature (t. abī‘a) as, 100-101 civilization, 513-535; and culture, 514; and the ‘New Said’, 522; Nursi on Western civilization, 523-528; Nursi’s uses of the term, 515-518; semantic problems, 513. Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), 541, 542 compatibilism, 374, 393 constitutionalism, 414, 541; Nursi’s support for, 519, 554, 565 death, Nursi’s meditations on, 314, 315, 325, 327, 328, 352, 458, 459, 475, 479-481 deeds, righteous, 301-302 Democrat Party, 551, 552, 553 dhikr (remembrance of God), 52, 322, 341, 342, 343 Divine attributes, categories of, 25 Divine determining (qadar), 363-398; and Divine command (amr), 370; and Divine decree (qad. ā), 366; and Divine knowledge (‘ilm), 367, 370; and Divine power (qudra), 366, 369, 370, 371; and evil, 383-385; and human free will, 373-378; and kasb (‘acquisition’), 392-389; and principle of tarjīh.  bilā murajjih.  (‘preference without a determinant to prefer it’), 380; and relative justice, 385-386; and the ‘clear Book’ (kitāb-i mubīn),367-369; and the ‘clear Record’ (imām-i mubīn), 367369, 370, 371, 390; as a fundamental of

616

belief, 393-396; connection with Divine will (irāda), 369, 370, 371; creational evidence of, 366-373; Divine omniscience and, 375376; human accountability and, 378-382; practical effects of belief in, 396-398; role of inclination (mayalān) in,379, 380, 383; role of supplication in, 389-393; views of the Jabriyya on, 363-364, 365, 377, 378, 388, 393, 396; views of the Mu‘tazilites on, 364, 377, 378, 393 Divine speech (kalām), 193-198, 205, 224, 227, 348; and Divine ‘condescension’ (tanazzul), 194; degrees of, 206; infinite nature of, 195196 essence, Divine (dhāt), 16-18, 24, 50, 51, 52, 84, 172, 192, 196, 206, 234, 361, 451, 456; and hāhūt, 87; unknowable nature of, 57. eternal besoughtedness (s.amadiyya), 13, 48, 148, 149 evil, 60; as lack of good, 387; as misguided desire, 385; as non-existence, 63, 76, 384, 387; as privation, 71, 384; conceptual reality of, 71; human accountability for, 385; human actions and, 183; not created, 297, 384; only apparent, 64, 65; ontological status of, 75; relative nature of, 75 Fārābī, AbūNas. rMuh. ammad, 11, 62, 187, 516 fasting (s.awm), 329-336 ‘Five Divine Presences’ (al-h.  ad.  arāt al-ilāhiyyāt alkhams), 85-90 freewill, human, 373-378 frugality, Nursi on, 504-511; and physical wellbeing, 505-507; and stinginess, 508-509; and the provision of livelihood, 507-508; and wastefulness, 509-511; as a form of thanks (shukr), 505; functionalism, 402-403 Ghazālī, Abū H .  āmid Muh. ammad, 87, 99, 150, 323, 329, 348, 415, 555, 562; and pastoral theology, 466; on causation, 95; on the five ‘Presences’, 89-90; on philosophy, 381 God, absoluteness of, 39-41; as Disposer and Administrator of creation, 41-42; as

  Index source of all diversity, 28-30; as source of all perfections, 22-21; compassionateness of, 46-49; comprehensiveness of, 39-41; dominical action of, 49-51; dominicality(rubūbiyya) of, 36-37; everchanging manifestations of, 27-28; glory and beauty (jamāl wa jalāl) of, 28-30; grandeur and sublimity of, 38-39; immateriality of, 19-21; indivisibility and non-locatibility of, 21; infinitude of, 39-41; logical v. ontological necessity of, 13-16; mercifulness (rah. māniyya) of, 42-46; ‘necessary existence’ of, 11-13;negatory attributes of, 18-19, 2223; non-corporeality of, 19; Nursi’s proofs of Divine unity of, 10-11; omnipresence of, 20; oneness (ah. adiyya) of, 30-33; ‘otherness’ of, 16-18; seven ‘sacred names’ of, 24-27; sovereignty of (h. ākimiyya), 37-38; unity (wah. dāniyya) of, 30-33 Hashwiyya, 19, 572 n.25 hereafter, 245-282; ‘argument from authority’, 256-257, 281; ‘argument from God’, 261-281; ‘argument from justice’, 251; bodily resurrection, 247; creational signs as examples of, 257-258; human desire for immortality as proof of, 253-254, 267-268; Divine ‘promise and threat’ as proofs of, 274-275; Divine beauty as proof of, 265266; Divine bounties as proof of, 251-252; Divine compassion as proof of, 266; Divine dominicality and sovereignty as proof of, 261; Divine eternality as proof of, 268-273; Divine generosity and mercy as proofs of, 262-263; Divine protection and preservation as proofs of, 273-274; human vicegerency as proof of, 279-281; life and death as proofs of, 276-277; purposefulnessof creation as sign of, 258-260; world as ‘training ground’ for, 254-255. Hick, John, 13-14 Hume, David, 103, 104 ‘I’, the human (anā), 173-190; (defined), 179-181; as ‘unit of measurement’, 182-183; connec­ tion to Divine ‘trust’ (amāna), 177-179; purpose of man’s creation, 173-175; power

of animal appetites (al-quwwa al-shahwiyya al-bahīmiyya), 188-189; power of intellect (alquwaa al-‘aqliyya), 188-189; powe of repulsion (al-quwwa al-ghad.  abiyya), 188-189; the ‘lines of prophethood and philosophy’, 185-189; the two faces of, 183-184 ibdā wa inshā (origination and composition), 3334, 129-130, 583 n.52 Ibn al-‘Arabī, 30, 44, 79, 80, 85, 86, 93, 94, 150, 174, 175, 335, 573 n.45; on the unity of existence, 72-77 Ibn ‘At. ā, Wās.il, 209 Ibn Makkī, AbūT.  ālib, 87, 90 Ibn Sīnā, 11, 228; definition of nature, 100; on ‘stages of existence’ (marātib al-wujūd), 69; on necessary existence, 11-12; on the eternity of the cosmos, 62; on the resurrection, 94, 247, 282. ilhām (inspiration), 197-198 immortality, 143, 152, 247; human desire for, 243, 253-254, 264, 266-267; of the human soul/spirit, 151, 153 imprisonment, Nursi’s meditations on, 495-500 invocation (du‘ā), 354-362; and Divine determining (qadar), 360; verbal (qawlī) and active (fi‘lī), 357-358 irāda (Divine will), 26, 29, 313, 360; legislative (shar‘iyya), 313; universal (kawniyya), 313 Jabriyya, 363-364, 365, 377, 378, 388, 393, 396 al-Jāh. iz. , 224 al-Jaylānī, ‘Abd al-Qādir, 345, 597 n.14. Also see, al-Jīlānī. Jesus, 92, 129, 208, 527 jihād, 557-570; and qitāl (fighting), 560-561; conflation with fighting, 558; etymology of, 558; ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’jihād, 561-562; Muslim historical approaches to, 561-563; not reducible to fighting, 558-559; Nursi’s repudiation of militant jihād, 566; offensive/ defensive nature of, 562-563; ‘spiritual’ (ma ‘nawī) nature of jihād, 563. Jīlānī, ‘Abd al-Qādir, 507. See also, al-Jaylānī. Job (Ayyūb), the prophet, 386, 489, 490, 493, 494, 495

617

Index  Joseph (Yūsuf ), the prophet, 223, 224, 412, 462, 497, 546 al-Jurjāni, ‘Abd al-Qāhir 212 Kemal, Namık, 519, 540, 610 n.13 al-Khafajī, IbnSinān, 224 Kurdistan, 542 lawh. -i mah. w wa ithbāt(‘tablet of effacing and reaffirming’), 390, 392 life (h.  ayāt), 134-150; and Divine unity, 147150; and the six ‘pillars of belief ’, 140-147; as cause for gratitude, 139-140; as light of creation, 135-136; as proof of Divine determining (qadar), 145-147; as proof of existence of angels, 141-142; as proof of prophethood, 142-143; as proof of the hereafter, 143-145; causeless nature of, 136139 love (mah. abba), 433-465; and Divine beauty, 435-436; and immortality, 442-443; and the ‘hidden Treasure’ h.  adīth, 435; and the ‘Other-indicative’, 444; and the ‘selfreferential’, 445; as sacrifice, 455; as the reason for creation, 435-439; difference between Divine and human love, 436-437; Divine love and Divine will, 438-439; Divine love and tanzīh/tashbīh, 437-438; Divine love for creation, 437; Divine selflove, 437; for children, 453, 458, 461; for friends, 453, 458, 461; for parents, 452-453, 457, 461; for prophets and saints, 454, 458459; for spouses, 454, 457, 460-461; human need for, 442, 449; innate nature of human love for God, 439-443; of beauty, 440-441; pitfalls of, 443-451; sacralisation of, 451-463 māhiyya(essence; quiddity), 16, 17, 18, 59, 70, 162 ma‘nā-i h.  arf ī (Other-indicative) / ma‘nā-i ismī (self-referential) approach to creation, 97, 104, 271, 272, 275, 278, 298, 316, 353-354, 445, 458, 482, 506, 526, 579 n.7 al-Māturidī, AbūMans.ūr, 379 mayalān (inclination), 379, 380, 383; power of disposal (tas.arruf) over, 379, 380 Menderes, Adnan, 551, 552, 611 n.35

618

Muhammad, prophethood of, 232-243; and ‘is.ma (infallibility), 237-238; and the Divine names, 232-235; and the ‘Muhammadan light’ 143, 236, 240; as ‘beautiful exemplar’ (uswa h. asana), 234; human nature of, 236238; qualities and virtues of, 238-243; Quran as supreme miracle of, 237 Mujassima, 19, 572 n.25 Mullā S. adrā, 69, 134, 162, 555, 577 n.28 mumkin al-wujūd (contingent), 380 Mushabbiha, 19, 572 n.25 Mu‘tazilites, 215,364, 377, 378, 393 nafs al-ammāra(the ‘evil-commanding’ soul), 249, 496, 539; function of, 457 Nasafī, ‘Azīz, 44, 150 naturalism, materialistic, 97, 98 old age, Nursi on, 470-489 Paley, William, 102, 103 Parsons, Talcott, 402 patience (s.abr), Nursi on, 489-495 politics, 537-556; (defined), 537-558; and the Quran, 539; Nursi’s aversion towards, 539540; the ‘New Said’ and, 542-551; the ‘Old Said’ and, 540-542; the ‘Third Said’ and, 551-554 prayer, canonical (s.alāt), 323-329 prophethood (nabuwwa), 198-201; and the ‘book of the universe’, 199; life as proof of necessity of, 200-201 necessity of, 198-200 purification of the soul (tazkiyya al-nafs), 183, 221, 268, 338, 342, 343, 350-354 Quran, 203-232; as word of God, 207210; challenge to reproduce, 208-210; comprehensiveness (jāmi‘iyya) of, 219-224; definition of, 205-207; eloquence (balāgha) of, 212-224; expression (lafz. ) in, 217-219, 219-221; inimitability (i‘jāz) of, 208-210, 211-212, 215, 219, 223, 224-225, 231, 232; meaning (ma‘nī) of, 215-216, 221; miraculousness of, 211-212; provenance of, 225-232; style (uslūb) of, 216-217, 222; superiority of, 203-205; themes of, 222-

  Index 224; types of knowledge in, 222; word order (naz. m) of, 212-215 Republican People’s Party, 551 Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn, 78, 79, 314, 342, 481 s.amadiyya, see: Eternal besoughtedness scientism, 97, 167, 180, 411, 524, 579 n.6 secularism (in the Turkish Republic), 543; Nursi’s approach to, 545, 550 Shah Walī Allah Dihlawī, 69, 70 Sirhindī, ShaykhAh. mad, 75-76, 80, 93, 94, 345, 348 shūrā (consultation), 539, 610 n.10 sincerity (ikhlās.), 401-420; and cooperation, 401404; and rivalry, 409-411; and the students of the Risale-iNur, 411-415; discord and harmony, 404-406; securing and preserving of, 415-416; social unity and, 407-409; threats to, 416-419; unity among the students of the Risale, 419-420 spirit (rūh. ), 150-155; and Divine law, 152; and soul (nafs), 150; dependence of body on, 153; essential simplicity (basāt. a) of, 153; immateriality (tajarrud) of, 153; immortality of, 151, 153; multivalent nature of, 150; of non-human beings, 154-155 spirituality, 337-362; definition of, 337-338; Nursi’s ‘fourfold way’, 349-354; Sufi expressions of, 338-349 Sufism, 338-349; and Divine gnosis, 343; and the sharī’a, 345, 348; definition of, 339; ‘folk’ Sufism, 340-341; medieval popularity of, 341; origins of, 339; institutionalisation of, 340; purification of the soul and, 342; rituals of, 341-342; . tarīqa system of, 340 tafakkur (reflective thought), 343, 349 Tahāfut al-falāsifa, 95 tanzīh wa tashbīh (Divine incomparability and likeness), 18, 22, 28, 29, 52, 60, 66, 86, 437, 575 n.118

theology, apophatic, 18, 22, 23, 25, 29 theology, pastoral, and h.  ikma (wisdom), 465-466 wujūb al-wujūd (‘necessary existence’), 11, 55 ‘Thirty First of March Incident’, 541 Turkish Republic, 2; and Nursi’s repudiation of jihād, 566-567; and secularisation, 246, 543, 545, 550; and the ‘New Said’, 542; laicism of, 495 unbelief, 284, 286, 288, 293, 295, 314, 357, 430, 469, 476, 569; and causation, 98-99; as crime against creation, 275; as covering the truth, 290; as disconnection from God, 288; as the result of free choice, 554; consequences of, 295-299 ‘unity of existence’ (wah. dat al-wujūd ), 56-58, 7172, 75, 77-79, 80, 86, 354 ‘unity of witnessing’ (wah. dat al-shuhūd ), 71, 75, 76, 79, 80, 354 wah. dat al-wujūd. See ‘unity of existence’. wah. y (revelation), 191-198; and Divine ‘con­ descension’ (tanazzul), 194; and Divine speech (kalām), 193-195;and inspiration (ilhām), 197-198; and the ‘hidden Treasure’ h. adīth, 191-192; as Divine self-expression, 201;general, 197; necessity of, 191-193; particularised, 197-198; ubiquity of, 195-19 worship (‘ibāda), ubiquity of, 302-309; formal acts of, 322-336; sacralisation of acts of, 322; worshipfulness (‘ubūdiyya), man’s sense of, 309314; conscious, 318-320; and acting in God’s name, 320-322 wujūb al-wujūd (‘necessary existence’), 11, 55 Young Ottomans, 540 Young Turk Revolution, 540, 541, 602 n.36, 611 n.18

619