In the life of Muslims, the Qur’an is of particular importance because it is the exact revealed word of God and the most significant source of Islam. It has an inimitable and unique nature, and it is protected by God from any corruption. The Qur’an is a true guide leading humanity to happiness in this world and the hereafter. The Qur’an is a book of law, prayer, wisdom, worship, commands and prohibitions. Muslims believe that the Qur’an was revealed for people of all centuries, and it meets the needs and requirements of all people. Therefore, interpretation of the Qur’an has been the most important concern of Muslims from the earliest period of Islam up to the present.
Various exegetical works have emerged from the earliest period of Islam to today. While some Qur’anic exegetes such as Ṭabarī (d. 310 AH/923 CE) relied on tradition-based exegesis, the others such as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606 AH/1210 CE) focused on reason-based exegesis. Moreover, by the ninth century CE, major religio-political schools such as Sunnī, Shi‘a and Kharijite developed their distinctive approaches to Qur’anic exegesis. In addition, a number of other significant forms of exegesis also emerged in the first three centuries of Islam such as theological, legal, mystical and philosophical exegesis.1
The world has experienced various changes in the modern period. Such changes like globalization, migration, scientific developments, materialism and positivism, secularism, the emergence of nation states and greater interfaith relations affected the Muslim world in the modern period. Because of the challenges that faced modern Muslims, Muslim scholars returned to the Qur’an and its interpretation. In the mid-nineteenth century, modernist exegesis emerged under the impact of Western critical and positivistic thought and modernism in various parts of Muslim lands such as India and Egypt. Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898) and Muhammad ʿAbduh (d. 1905) are two earlier and significant figures of this trend. Both approached the Qur’an differently in many respects, emphasizing the importance of moving away from imitation of the past towards a sensitive approach compatible with modern life. In their views, there was the need for reinterpretation of the Qur’an with a scientific world view in mind. They wanted to reinterpret miracles in the Qur’anic text in line with modern science and reason.2
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877–1960) is also a great modern Muslim scholar from the twentieth century. He may be considered to be the most influential scholar in the social and intellectual development of Islam in modern Turkey.3 In the face of modernity, he also dealt with the interpretation of the Qur’an and attempted to respond to the challenges. His magnum opus the Risale-i Nur collection is a 6000-page commentary on the Qur’an. It is not necessary to all commentators to interpret all verses of the Qur’an. Some of them must give priority to serve the needs of their times. Nursi started his task from the most important point, at a period when religious education and the time given to religious sciences had been decreased. Nursi’s commentary made strong explanations about topics like the existence of God, His attributes, the Angels, holy books, prophethood, revelation and the hereafter. The Risale-i Nur is a commentary that usually explains the verses concerned with the fundamentals of belief, which is a topic of the discipline of systematic Islamic theology. It clarifies and proves truths of the Qur’an related to belief with powerful arguments.4 In his works, Nursi expressed the main issue of the Muslim world: the weakening of belief’s foundations. He attempted to strengthen belief against the unceasing attacks of positivistic and materialistic science by reconstructing Islam from its foundations of belief.5
It is noteworthy that Nursi generally divides Qur’an commentaries into two categories: literal tafsīr (elucidates the Qur’anic phraseology and words) and maʿnawī tafsīr (exegesis on the Qur’an’s meanings and message), and then he defines his collection as a kind of maʿnawī tafsīr, a commentary on the Qur’an’s meanings in a number of places.6 The first type of Qur’an commentaries elucidates the Qur’an’s phraseology, words and sentences. But the second type (maʿnawī tafsīr) elucidates and proves the Qur’an’s truths related to belief with powerful arguments. Nursi emphasizes that the Risale-i Nur has made this second type its basis directly, and is a commentary on the Qur’an’s meanings.7 It is concluded from the above that Nursi focused in his collection on the meanings and the message of the Qur’an rather than verse-by-verse exegesis in classical-style commentaries except for his one-volume Qur’an commentary, Ishārāt al-Iʿjāz (Signs of Inimitability). Ishārāt al-Iʿjāz is a reason-based exegesis (tafsīr bi-al-ra’y), and Nursi utilizes the methods of the classical exegesis (verse-by-verse analysis) in his interpretation.
However, Nursi also defines his collection as “a work of kalām” in a number of places. Nursi emphasizes that the works of his Risale are lessons in the discipline of kalām, and the Risale showed a way to the essence of reality through logical proofs and scholarly arguments and a direct way of “greater sainthood” within the sciences of kalām, and ʻaqīda and uṣūl al-dīn.8 In addition, Nursi’s primary concern is the renewal of belief and the reform of the individual. While the majority of modern Muslim movements has put emphasis on the “implementation” of Islam at the sociopolitical level, discussion mainly on issues such as Islamic law and the concept of the Islamic state, Nursi is one of the few Muslim intellectuals who did not deal much with the socio-economic or political issues of Muslim life in the twentieth century.9 It could be said that he made a distinction between Islam and politics and did not aim at political Islam.
Taking into account the information above, it could be said that Nursi combines a number of Islamic disciplines in his writings, attempting to see the whole picture as sciences (Islamic disciplines) break (divide) the religion into separate pieces very much. Therefore, Nursi’s descriptions of tafsīr, kalām and other descriptions for his collection need a further study to discover his unique method. This book aims to analyse the existing approaches to the collection with regard to its method and develops the existing point of view by reformulating it such that the new version makes a better explanation of it.
In recent years, the world has witnessed the rise of narrow literalism in Islamic social and political movements. This literalism depends on reading straight from sacred text to modern world, as if every word of the Qur’an is a signpost for the twenty-first century. But this was not always the case, as seen in the writings of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. Nursi is one of the distinguished Muslim scholars for the modern Islamic thought, and his ideas have been influential in the Muslim world. As a result, the Risale-i Nur has been translated into many languages, read by many people throughout the world, a number of symposiums organized for it and chairs and institutes established in its study.
Large numbers of PhD research theses have been written on Nursi and particular themes of the Risale-i Nur in contemporary Islamic scholarship. Also, a large number of academic symposiums have been organized since 1991 in a variety of different countries. Each symposium focuses on a particular theme of the Risale-i Nur collection such as ethics, justice and frugality. The fourth international symposium held in Istanbul in 1998 titled, A Contemporary Approach to Understanding the Qur’an: The Example of the Risale-i Nur is a good example of such symposiums.10 Colin Turner’s recent published book, called The Qur’an Revealed: A Critical Analysis of Said Nursi’s Epistles of Light (Gerlach Press, 2013), is a good source book for the major themes of the Risale-i Nur. However, there is a need for the analysis of the collection in the discipline of tafsīr and modern Qur’anic exegesis.
The objective of this book is an enquiry into Nursi’s methodology of Qur’anic exegesis, seeking to locate Nursi within modern Qur’anic scholarship. How Nursi relates the Qur’anic text to concerns of the modern period needs to be examined....