Prof. Akgündüz Brief an Kerimova

[Selim]

Rotterdam, February 2009

Islam Abdug'aniyevich Karimov

Your Excellency President of Uzbekistan;

 

I have read from different Newspapers from European Countries that your Government is oppressing on some religious people who are called Nur Talebeleri and forbidding The Works of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. We consider Uzbekistan a real mother part of Muslim World and the motherland for many big Muslim Scholars like Imam Bukhari and respect your successful administration. But this situation is hurting your people nd country. I think there are some misconceptions about Bediuzzaman and his works. This is not suitable for a President who is owner and descendent of Timur. That is my task as a Muslim Scholar and as a President of an Islamic University in Europe to narrate you massage of Muslim Scholars in the Netherlands. We are not diplomats; so if we made some mistakes please forgive us.

 

Excellency President;

Many statesmen have misunderstood or that was mal presented to them Bediuzzaman and his works. But now many maltreating statesmen have passed away; but Bediuzzaman and his students are enlightening people about faith and Islam; not only in Muslim World, in European and American communities too. I hope Your Excellency will interfere to this maltreating and gain a good name in History of mankind. I would like to present some facts about Bediuzzaman and his works:

 

1. BEDIUZZAMAN SAID NURSl"; THE MAN OF DIALOGUE AND PEACE

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was born in 1876 in eastern Turkey and died in 1960 in Urfa in Turkey. You may refer to his biography for details of his long and exemplary life, which spanned the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, its collapse after the First World War and the setting up of the Republic, then the twenty-five years of Republican Peoples' Party rule.

Bediuzzaman displayed an extraordinary intelligence and ability to learn from an early age, completing the normal course of medrese (religious school) education at the early age of fourteen, when he obtained his diploma. Another characteristic Bediuzzaman displayed from an early age was an instinctive dissatisfaction with the existing education system, which when older he formulated into comprehensive proposals for its reform. The heart of these proposals was the bringing together and

joint teaching of the traditional religious sciences and the modern sciences, together with the founding of a university in the Eastern Provinces of the Empire, the Medresetii'z-Zehra, where this and his other proposals would be put into practice..

In any study of the development of Christian-Muslim dialogue in the 20th Century, special attention has been given to the writings and preaching of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. As one of the first religious thinkers in the course of this century to propose and promote dialogue between Muslims and Christians, Said Nursi's advocacy of this dialogue dates back to 1911, a full half-century before the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council urged Christians and Muslims to resolve their differences, to move beyond the conflicts of the past and to build relations of respect and cooperation.

Contrary to the practice of religious scholars at that time, Bediuzzaman himself studied and mastered almost all the physical and mathematical sciences, and later studied philosophy, for he believed that it was only in this way that Islamic theology (kalam) could be renewed and successfully answer the attacks to which the Qur'an and Islam were then subject.

 

The years up to the end of the First World War were the final decades of the Ottoman Empire and were, in the words of Bediuzzaman, the period of the 'Old Said1. In additions to his endeavours in the field of learning, he served the cause of the Empire and Islam through active involvement in social life and the public domain. In the War, he commanded the militia forces on the Caucasian Front against the invading Russians, for which he as later awarded a War Medal. To maintain the morale of his men he himself disdained to enter the trenches in spite of the constant shelling, and it was while withstanding the overwhelming assaults of the enemy that he wrote his celebrated Qur'anic commentary, Signs of Miraculousness, dictating to a scribe while on horseback. Bediuzzaman was taken prisoner in March 1916 and held in Russia for two years before escaping in early 1918, and returning to Istanbul via Warsaw, Berlin, and Vienna.

 

The defeat of the Ottomans saw the end of the Empire and its dismemberment, and the occupation of Istanbul and parts of Turkey by foreign forces. These bitter years saw also the transformation of the Old Said into the New Said, the second main period of Bediuzzaman's life. Despite the acclaim he received and services he performed as a member of the Daru'l-Hikmeti'l-lslamiye, a learned body attached to the Shaykhu'l-lslam's Office, and combatting the British, Bediuzzaman underwent a profound mental and spiritual change in the process of which he turned his back on the world. Realizing the inadequacy of the 'human' science and philosophy he had studied as a means of reaching the truth, he took the revealed Qur'an as his 'sole guide.' In recognition of his services to the Independence Struggle, Bediuzzaman was invited to Ankara by Mustafa Kemal, but on arrival there, found that at the very time of the victory of the Turks and Islam, atheistic ideas were being propagated among the Deputies and officials, and many were lax in performing their religious duties. He published various works which successfully countered this.

 

2. HIS WORKS: THE RISALE-I NUR COLLECTION

As the New Said, Bediuzzaman had immersed himself in the Qur'an, searching for a way to relate its truths to modern man. He has dedicated his life completly to write treatises explaining and proving these truths, for now the Qur'an itself. The first of these was on the Resurrection of the Dead, which in a unique style, proves bodily Resurrection rationally, where even the greatest scholars previously had confessed their impotence.

 

With these writings, Bediuzzaman opened up a new, direct way to reality (haqiqat) and knowledge of God which he described as the highway of the Qur'an and way of the Companions of the Prophet through the 'legacy of Prophethood.'

Bediuzzaman solved many mysteries of religion, such as bodily resurrection and Divine Determining and man's will, and the riddle of the constant activity in the universe and the motion of particles, before which man relying on his own intellect and philosophy had been impotent. The way the Risale-i Nur was written and disseminated was unique, like the work itself. Bediuzzaman would dictate at speed to a scribe, who would write down the piece in question with equal speed; the actual writing was very quick.

 

We should mention here another feature of Bediuzzaman in the success of the his efforts that may be summarized with two phrases: 'manevt jihad,' that is, 'jihad of the word' or 'non-physical jihad', and 'positive action.' Bediuzzaman insisted that his students avoided any use of force and disruptive action. Through 'positive action,' and the maintenance of public order and security, the damage caused by the radical forces could be 'repaired' by the healing truths of the Qur'an. And this is the way they have adhered to.

 

There is no a historian or a statesman that could mention one deed for Bediuzzaman and his students is against public order and security. This is a reality.

With my highest regards

 

Prof. Dr. Ahmed Akgunduz

President of Islamic University of Rotterdam