Mustafa Tuna, “At the Vanguard of Contemporary Muslim Thought: Reading Said
Nursî into the Islamic Tradition.” Journal of Islamic Studies, 2017
28(3).
ABSTRACT: Despite his growing renown as a Kurdish-origin scholar of Islam from
post-Ottoman Turkey, academia and the transregional networks of Islamic
scholarship rarely engage the content of Said Nursî's (1878-1960) innovative
works (Risale-i Nur). To the background of various historical and
cultural circumstances that produce such intellectual peripherality, this
article suggests that Nursî's system of theological contemplation (tafakkur)
expands the limits of Muslim religious thought from within the Sunni Islamic
tradition, by incorporating aspects of the Muslim creed that have conventionally
been substantiated based on textual evidence (samʿiyyāt)
into the realm of rational argumentation (ʿaqliyyāt)
and by bolstering the place of contemplation in Sufi practice.