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.

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.