In the Light of Said Nursi
Camilla T. Nereid
University of Bergen
Said Nursi (1873-1960), the founder of one of the most important religious movements of modern Turkey, was throughout his life faced with opposition and distrust from the Kemalist state. He was presented as a madman, a Muslim fanatic and a Kurdish nationalist. While other religious groups were persecuted when they incited revolts, the Nurcus were taken to court simply for being Nurcus. Yet Said Nursi, an early supporter of Mustafa Kemal, had come to accept many of the tenets of the new state. He only gave his own interpretation to such concepts of secularism, seeing it as the state’s withdrawal from the religious arena, rather than a change to religion itself. He did, however, reject the concept of nationalism, both in its Kurdish and Turkish form. This was his main intellectual challenge to the new state, and the reason his movement was targeted for harassment more than the Nak§ibendis and other religious groups who accepted the idea of a Turkish nation.
Bergen Studies on the Middle East and Africa is a series of monographs from younger scholars at the University of Bergen. Based on previously unpublished dissertations, it covers the humanities and social sciences, with an emphasis on Islamic Africa and the Near East.
Contents
Preface / vii
1. Introduction / 1
Historiography / 3
The sources: Reliability and limitations / 7
2. Who was Said Nursi? / 14
Said Nursi as saviour and betrayer of faith / 16
Creating an identity / 19
Establishing a reputation / 21
Șeyh Said Nursi / 25
The dangers of charisma / 27
Blessings / 28
3. The Nur movement / 30
Push factors / 31
A Nurcu member: Hamza Emek / 35
The status of women / 36
Scripturalism and textual community / 42
Nurcus in the political arena / 46
4. Secularism / 35
The status of religion in the early Turkish Republic / 56
The organization of religion in Turkey / 60
Official Islam versus Sufism / 63
Secularism and Paragraph 163 / 71
The cases against Said Nursi / 75
5. Nationalism / 81
The Nakgibendi brotherhood versus Said Nursi / 81
Historical context / 88
One war; two interpretations / 91
Turkish nationalism / 92
Said Nursi's view on nationalism / 96
6. Conclusion / 102
Epilogue / 106
Appendixes
A. Paragraphs 175-178 of the Turkish penal code / 108
B. Interview with Suleyman Demirel / 110
C. Secularist reforms / 112
D. M. Kemal: Declaration to the people / 114
Glossary / 115
Bibliography / 117
PREFACE
Religion is not a human failing that was born in ignorance and that is dying in knowledge
Callum G. Brown1
This is a study of a Turkish Islamic movement, the Nur movement, and its founder, Said Nursi (1873-1960), who opposed the very principles of the Turkish Republic. A study of Said Nursi and his movement is important both because of its great influence on the Turkish society and because such a study can provide empirical material for the general discussion of nationalism, secularism and modernity.
The structure of the conflict between Said Nursi, the Nur movement and the Turkish state can be illustrated with a triangular model, in which each of the three sides represents a separate conflict:
The State Status Conflict Official Islam
Ideological Conflict Theological Conflict
The Nur Movement
This book, which is based on my 1994 Hovedfag thesis, is structured around these three conflict dimensions. Chapter One introduces the central problematics and places the subject matter in a broader historiographical perspective. Chapter Two presents contrasting biographical presentations of Said Nursi, giving special emphasis to how he legitimized his authority and how this authority was recognized by his followers. Chapter Three then discusses the relation between Said Nursi’s personality and the characteristics of the Nur movement.
Chapter Four is on the conflict between Said Nursi and the Turkish state, how it appeared as a theological conflict between official and parallel Islam and between secularism and Islamism. It also discusses the controversy between the state and the official Islamic institution concerning the status of religion, and the reorganization of Islam as a part of the republican establishment.
Chapter Five places the ideological conflict in a historical context, nationally and internationally. It looks for the core of the conflict and thus seeks to answer the specific questions asked in Chapter One.
The conclusion, Chapter Six, sums up the general questions asked in the introduction, but also discusses Said Nursi’s significance as an actor in the formation of a new religious movement.
For financial support I want to thank the International Secretariat at University of Bergen and the Turkish Ministry of Education (Turk Milli Egitim Bakanhgi), which also opened a number of doors for me.
Thanks to £enay £akir and Giilser Akdogan at the University of Ankara, Department of Turkish for Foreigners (Tiirkge Ogretim Merkezi/Tomer), who went beyond their professional obligations in order to teach me Turkish. I am greatly indebted to Said Yiice, at the Nur movement’s periodical Yeni Nesil in Ankara, who provided me with a small library of writings on and by Said Nursi, free of charge.
Dr. Knut Vik0r, Director of the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Bergen, deserves mention for reading and criticizing the manuscript, thanks also to Professor Rex Sean O’Fahey, my miirfid, for inspiration, encouragement, and a thorough reading of the thesis.
Finally I want to thank my husband, Hakan, for his merciless criticism, and my children; Aurora, Alberte and Cengiz for their patience with an always absent-minded mother.
Note on Transliteration
I have used modern Turkish spelling for all words of either Turkish, Arabic or Persian origin, with one exception; the Turkish ‘Kuran’, for which I have used the English ‘Koran’. The following are the equivalent sounds in English or French:
a: as u in fun
c: as j in jackpot
ç: as ch in chocolate
e: as e in flesh
g: as g in gamble
ğ with hard vowels, almost unpronounced but lengthens the preceding vowel; with soft vowels as y
ı: as i in cousin
i: as i in innocent
j: as the French j
o: as o in dog
ö: as the French eu
ş: as sh in ship
u: as in bull
ü: as the French u in tu
In the text and footnotes, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanhği) is generally referred to as ‘The Directorate’.
All translations from Turkish are mine unless otherwise indicated.
Bergen, May 1997
Camilla T. Nereid
1 Restatement of a point made by J. Cox in The English Churches in a Secular Society, Oxford 1982.
1
Introduction
The Turks are a human cancer, a creeping agony in the flesh of the lands which they misgovern, rotting every fibre of life ... I am glad that the Turk is to be called to a final account for his long record of infamy against humanity
D. Lloyd George, British Prime Minister.1
The fall of the Ottoman Empire was applauded by the Western world, and Mustafa Kemal, who established the Turkish Republic in 1923, was expected to cure ‘the sick man of Europe’ once and for all. But the therapy he prescribed, known as the Six Principles of Kemalism; Republicanism (cumhuriyetfilik), Nationalism (milliyetfilik'), Populism (halk^ilik), Etatism (devletfilik), Secularism (laiklik), and Revolutionism (inkilapcilik), had unexpected and, from the doctor’s point of view, undesirable side effects.
The Kemalist principles were met with considerable resistance both within and outside the political system.2 The most fundamental criticism of the Kemalist regime was articulated by the religious leader Said Nursi (1873-1960), who became the symbol of religious opposition against the secular Turkish nation-state.3 His criticism focused on the state’s implementation of secularism and nationalism.
…..
1 From a speech 10 November 1914, H.W.V. Temperley (ed.), A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, Oxford 1969, VI, 24.
2 The political opposition is treated in a book by Erik Jan Zürcher, Political Opposition in the Early Turkish Republic, Leiden 1991.
3 The Kemalist government was also challenged by other groups such as the Kurdish nationalists under their leader feyh Sait in 1925; see Chapter Five.
Camilla T. Nereid
In the Light of Said Nursi
University of Bergen
University of Bergen
Bergen Studies on the Middle East and Africa 4
In the Light of Said Nursi
Turkish nationalism and the religious alternative
Camilla T. Nereid
Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
Bergen 1997
First published 1997 in Norway by the
Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
University of Bergen
Parkv 22a
N-5007 Bergen
Norway
© Camilla T. Nereid 1997
ISBN 1-85065-309-7
Distributed by
C. Hurst & Co (Publishers) Ltd.,
38 King Street, London WC2E 8JT,
England
The series is published by the Centre for
Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and is distributed by
C. Hurst & Co (Publishers) Ltd.,
38 King Street,
London WC2E 8JT,
England
