Said Nursi and Science in Islam

Character Building through Nursi's Mana-i harfi

Necati Aydin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429671449
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamische Theologie

This book examines how the prominent Muslim scholar Said Nursi developed an integrative approach to faith and science known as "the other indicative" ( mana-i harfi ) and explores how his aim to reconcile two academic disciplines, often at odds with one another, could be useful in an educational context.

The book opens by examining Nursi's evolving thought with regards to secular ideology and modern science. It then utilizes the mana-i harfi approach to address a number of issues, including truth and certainty, the relationship between knowledge and worldview formation, and the meaning of beings and life. Finally, it offers a seven-dimensional knowledge approach to derive meaning and build good character through understanding scientific knowledge in the mana-i harfi perspective.

This book offers a unique perspective on one of recent Islam's most influential figures, and also offers suggestions for teaching religion and science in a more nuanced way. It is, therefore, a great resource for scholars of Islam, religion and science, Middle East studies, and educational studies.

1 Said Nursi’s evolving thoughts on secular ideology and modern science

1. Introduction

Said Nursi (1877–1960) certainly deserves great respect, with an entire life dedicated to serving his fellow human beings. He gave up many worldly opportunities and comfort for the sake of helping humanity in modern times. Said Nursi was born in 1877 in the village of Nurs in Eastern Turkey. He foresaw the upcoming malaise of modern and post-modern society. After initially attempting to save Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire) through active political engagement, he realized that politics was not going to help counter the sweeping effect of secularization at the global level.¹ More importantly, he recognized that the core problem of modern human beings was not ignorance, but knowledge. Modern minds were being transformed through a Western, secular worldview. Science, technology, and free-market capitalism were being utilized to secularize human minds. Nursi acknowledged that even he was not safe against such a powerful secularization wave, although his entire life was dedicated to Islamic causes. Rather than surrendering to the global wave of secularization, Nursi chose to commit his life to the struggle against secular ideology and secularized life.²

In the early years of his life, Nursi was fascinated with scientific knowledge. He committed at least 90 books to memory along with extensive deliberation and study in a bid to understand the modern sciences, philosophy, and religion. At the time, Nursi considered this newfound source of knowledge as the means for intellectual awakening:

Tahir Pasha, the Governor of Van, assigned me a room in the upper story of his residence. I used to stay there. Every night when I retired to my room I would recite for three hours the ninety books, of the Realities (haqâiq), I had memorized. It used to take three months to get through all of them.³

Unlike most Muslim scholars of his time, Nursi was intensely involved in science and philosophy in addition to Islamic teaching. He considered science a stairway to the knowledge of God, assuming that it was an objective study of God’s works. However, it took some time for him to realize that scientific knowledge was not pure. Rather, he found it contained the secular trio of apparent causes, nature, and chance. What he once considered a means for a better understanding of God became an obstacle to his spiritual progress. That is when he changed his attitude toward secular science and philosophy.

Rather than completely rejecting science, Nursi decided to first filter out secular ideology from scientific knowledge and then use the desecularized scientific knowledge as a means to get to know God (ma’rifatullah). For him, pure science was an ideal way to reveal the Divine signs (pl. ayaat) in the book of the universe. By removing secular ideology from science, Nursi could now read those signs. He showed how each scientific discipline links to a particular Divine Name. His entire life and work was dedicated to this endeavor. Indeed, he considered this project one of the three duties expected from the Mahdi (the Islamic version of Messiah). In his words, the primary task of the Mahdi is “to help people to save their faith by first and foremost silencing (atheist) philosophy and materialist ideology which spreads a plague-like disease of materialism and naturalism through (secular) science and philosophy” (Nursi, 2012b, p. 337).⁴ He thought of himself as a physician dealing with a fatal disease: “I am prescribing a medicine integrating experiential knowledge with scientific knowledge” (Nursi, 2012d, p. 445).

Indeed, since the Enlightenment, materialism has become the dominant scientific ideology. Reality has been reduced to matter with no meaning. However, as argued by Taylor, “materialism itself is an ontological thesis: everything which is based on ‘matter,’ whatever that means. But the argument here is ultimately epistemological, in that the ontological thesis appeals to the successes of science” (Taylor, 2007, Chapter 15).⁵ The driving force for scientific learning is not the truth. It is power and pleasure. The overarching goal is to gain control over matter and manipulate it for greater pleasure. This completely eliminates any sacred meaning from matter. It removes God from a scientific understanding of the universe and then replaces Him with material causes, nature, and chance. It formats the mind with a secular worldview, which leads to secular aspirations and secularization of life.

In this chapter, we will outline Nursi’s lifelong struggle with secular ideology and secularization of life. We will first discuss why many of Nursi’s followers do not consider his work within the Islamization of knowledge. Second, we will define Nursi’s concepts of mânâ-i ismî and mânâ-i harfî. Third, we will provide examples of reading the book of the universe in mânâ-i harfî. Fourth, we will discuss verses from the Qur’an that are relevant to the mânâ-i harfî approach. Fifth, we will show how the knowledge of the universe differs in mânâ-i ismî. Sixth, we will explore the relationship between the dominant worldview and secular science. Seventh, we will discuss the role of secular knowledge in the secularization of life in modern times. Finally, we will compare satisfaction through secular aspirations and spirituality.

2. Secular ideology and scientific knowledge

An overview of the secularization problem

Secular comes from the Latin word “saeculum,” meaning a century or age. In his masterpiece, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor (2007) provides in-depth analysis of secularization. He defines secular as aiming to live the life of ordinary time rather than aiming for eternity. In other words, being secular is being worldly and seeking satisfaction in this world. Taylor puts secularization in three forms: (1) secularization of public spaces in which we see the diminishing impact of God in social and political arenas, (2) secularization of people in terms of declining belief in God and practice; and (3) secularization of religious people in terms of pursuing fulfillment in this world. In Taylor’s terms, “secularity is a condition in which our experience of and search for fulness occurs; this is something we all share, believers and unbelievers alike… . Modernity brings about secularity, in all its three forms” (Taylor, 2007, Introduction).

Secularization changes the way we perceive the world. According to Taylor, for centuries, the West perceived the world within the prism of an ordered Aristotelian Cosmos of Aquinas. To secular minds, the world is “no longer a matter of admiring, normative order, in which God has revealed himself through sings and symbols” (Taylor, 2007, Chapter 2). Thus, the purpose is not to derive any meaning while studying the world. Rather, it is to bring the world under “the instrumental control of reason” (Taylor, 2007, Chapter 2). It is to disconnect any experienced phenomena from transcendent sources and consider them “purely natural.” It is a purification of nature from any sacred or transcendent meaning. Thus, we end up with “the natural order, the universe, purged of enchantment, and freed from miraculous interventions and special providences from God, operating by universal, unrespondent causal laws” (Taylor, 2007, Chapter 7). Science becomes a new religion dominating the mind and life of people.⁶ It is not “just one road to truth, but becomes the paradigm of all roads” (Taylor, 2007, Chapter 14).

Indeed, as people believe in science, they give up on God. “The modern sciences, mainly physics and biology, have weakened belief in God by assuming that the universe can be explained by a collection of laws that can be expressed in logical and mathematic forms” (Altaie, 2016, p. 32). The increasing percentage of educated people who define themselves as atheist or agnostic is clear evidence that modern science destroys faith in God. Indeed, in some European countries, nearly half of people have no belief in God.

Nasr is a leading scholar who studies the secularization of the Muslim mind. He argues that secular ideology was systematically injected into the Muslim world from the 13th century to the 19th century onward:

nowhere is the intrusion of secularism into the Islamic world is more evident than in the field of education … this is especially true not so much because of the subject matter taught but because of the point of view from which the subjects are taught. The medieval Muslim schools also taught mathematics, the natural sciences, languages, and letters, besides theology, jurisprudence, and philosophy. However, the modern subjects bearing the same name are not simply the continuation of the Islamic sciences.

(Nasr, 1981, pp. 12–13)

Nasr describes the Islamic scientific approach as follows:

The Islamic sciences breathed in a Universe in which God was everywhere. They were based upon certainty and searched after the principle of Unity in things which is reached through synthesis and integration. The modern sciences, on the contrary, live in a world in which God is nowhere or, even if there, is irrelevant to the science. They are based on doubt. Having once and for all turned their back on the unifying principles of things, they seek to analyze and divide the contents of Nature to an ever greater degree, moving towards multiplicity and away from Unity.

(Nasr, 1981, p. 13)

Al-Attas seems to agree with Taylor and Nasr that secularization goes far beyond politics and public domain. He defines three dimensions of secularization as “the disenchantment of nature, the desacralization of politics, and the deconsecration of values.” He defines the first type as

“freeing of nature from its religious overtones; … the dispelling of animistic spirits and gods and magic from the natural world, separating it from God and distinguishing man from it, so that man no longer regard nature as a divine entity, which thus allows him to act freely upon nature, to make use of it according to his needs and plans, and hence create historical change and development.

(Al-Attas, 1993, p. 18)

In other words, secularization means depriving any transcendent meaning from the scientific studies of cosmic phenomena.

The secular scientific approach is a problem because, from the Islamic point of view, we should read the book of the universe to learn about its Author and live accordingly:

If nature is like a great, open Book, then we must learn the meaning of the Words in order to discern their tentative and final purposes and enact their bidding and invitations and instructions to beneficial use in such wise that we might come to know and acknowledge in grateful appreciation the overwhelming generosity and wisdom of incomparable Author.

(Al-Attas, 1993, p. 39)

The secular scientific approach⁷ aims to distance a person from “the God of the universe so that he might act freely upon the nature confronting him” (Al-Attas, 1993, p. 36).

Al-Attas argues that the corruption of the Muslim mind through secular knowledge is the core problem, not corrupt political leadership.

If we ask ourselves what is it that is corrupt about their leadership we will recognize at once that it is their knowledge that is corrupt which renders their leadership corrupt. Corrupt leadership is the effect and not the cause; it is the effect of confusion and error in knowledge of Islam and its worldview.

(Al-Attas, 1993, p. 114)

Al-Attas vigorously fights against secularization of knowledge and values, because he thinks it is detrimental to the Islamic worldview: “not only is secularization as a whole the expression of an utterly unislamic worldview, it is also set against Islam, and Islam totally rejects the explicit as well as implicit manifestation and ultimate significance of secularization” (Al-Attas, 1993, p. 41). He makes compelling arguments that believers are not supposed to forget the hereafter for the sake of this world (dunya). He refers to the verses on worldly life (al-hayatul al-dunya) as the equivalent of secular. He defines Islamization of knowledge as the liberation from the secular worldview and language.

Nasr and Al-Attas elegantly and accurately diagnose the malaise of modern society with its major symptoms. They also portray a great picture of a healthy civilization. They have not succeeded in freeing the Muslim minds from secular ideology. Nursi did come up with a similar diagnosis long before Nasr and Al-Attas.⁸ However, he believed that Sufism is not a viable option in modern times. Instead, he offered a Tawhīdī worldview based on the mânâ-i harfî through the proper use of the self.

Nursi’s view of the secularization problem

Nursi would agree with all three scholars discussed earlier regarding the secularization of mind and life coming through modern science and technology. “For sure,” he said, “at the end of time, mankind will pour into science and technology. It will obtain all its power from science. Power and dominion will pass to the hand of science” (Nursi, 2012g, p. 275). Even though Nursi initially embraced science with great enthusiasm, it did not take long for him to reject the embedded secular ideology. Then, he dedicated his life to fighting against this ideology.⁹ Although it is clear that Nursi considered secular ideology the greatest enemy of humanity, his followers and some scholars¹⁰ miss this point because of four reasons.

First, Nursi has always emphasized that “Our enemies are ignorance, poverty, and conflict. We shall fight against these three enemies with the weapons of knowledge, technology, and unity respectively” (Nursi, 2012d, p. 387). Thus, it seems that he believed that the greatest enemy was ignorance, not knowledge. However, it is important to note that Nursi made the above statement to the Kurdish community, whose ...