Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration Editor's Introduction A Chronology of Said Nursi's Life Sukran Vahide 1. Toward an Intellectual Biography of Said Nursi Sukran Vahide 2. In the Footsteps of Said Nursi Fred A. Reed 3. Reflections on Said Nursi's Life and Thought Serif Mardin 4. Qur'anic Commentary, Public Space, and Religious Intellectuals in the Writings of Said Nursi Dale F. Eickelman 5. How to Read Said Nursi's Risale-i Nur Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi 6. Said Nursi's Interpretation of Jihad Sukran Vahide 7. Prison Is a Hell for the Unbeliever: Thoughts and Reflections on Two Imprisoned Muslims Ayize Jamat-Everett 8. Revelation, the Disciplines of Reason, and Truth in the Works of Said Nursi and Paul Tillich Kelton Cobb 9. The Concept of Man: Mevlana Jalal al-Din and Said Nursi Bilal Kuspinar 10. Forgetting Gramsci and Remembering Said Nursi: Parallel Theories of Gramsci and Said Nursi in the Space of Eurocentrism Mucahit Bilici 11. The Marrow of Worship and the Moral Vision: Said Nursi and Supplication Lucinda Allen Mosher 12. The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur'an in Said Nursi's Work Taha 'Abdel Rahman 13. The Problem of Theodicy in the Risale-i Nur Mehmet S. Aydin 14. The Apocalypse in the Teachings of Said Nursi Barbara Freyer Stowasser 15. Ghurbah as Paradigm for Muslim Life: A Risale-i Nur Worldview Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad 16. Islam, the Environment, and Said Nursi Oliver Leaman 17. Text and Community: An Analysis of the Risale-i Nur Movement Metin Karabasoglu 18. Nur Study Circles (Dershanes) and the Formation of New Religious Consciousness in Turkey M. Hakan Yavuz 19. Said Nursi's Project of Revitalizing Contemporary Islamic Thought M. Sait Ozervarli 20. Preface to the al-Mathnawi al-'Arabi al-Nuri Translated by Redha Ameur Bibliography Contributors Index

About the Author

Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi' is Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at the Hartford Seminary. He is the author of Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World and the editor of The Mystical Teachings of al-Shadhili: Including His Life, Prayers, Letters, and Followers. A Translation from the Arabic of Ibn al-Sabbagh's Durrat al-Asrar wa Tuhfat al-Abrar, both published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"...the editor is to be congratulated for attempting to bring contemporary ideas and analyses of Said Nursi's writings and subsequent movements to the scholarly foreground." - Middle East Studies Association Bulletin "Nursi comes across as more complicated and nuanced than a mere oppositional figure; his ambiguous placement between a traditional thought world and a more contemporary, international, even secular and scientific world, is what makes him interesting. This collection finds alternative categories to situate Nursi and his followers in the context of the modern, secular Turkish Republic." - Karl K. Barbir, author of Ottoman Rule in Damascus, 1708-1758 "I am impressed by the breadth of coverage. I have rarely encountered a collection of works on a particular Islamic intellectual that is so thorough and varied." - Ralph Coury, coeditor of The Arab-African and Islamic Worlds: Interdisciplinary Studies