Nur Movement

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NUR MOVEMENT

The Nur Movement (Nurçuluk) is a Turkish Islamic movement inspired by a modern reintepretetion of the Qur˒an in the volumes Risale-i Nur (Epistle of light). The risales (epistles) of the leader of the movement, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1876–1960), were first published in 1926. The Nur is not a sect but a social movement mainly because it does not have a formal structure and procedures for membership. Like a school, Nur has students. The followers of Nur constitute an Islamic community movement that can be seen as a set of effective personal networks.

The primary goal of the movement is to revitalize faith under the conditions of modernization. The movement aspires to reconcile several apparent contradictions such as those between modernity and tradition, religion and rationality, faith and science, belief and doubt, and the West and Islam. This middle ground positioning of the movement manifests itself in its vision of the ideal society, one that is a moral yet educated and scientifically competitive collectivity. The message is disseminated by its followers through an increasing use of modern technologies of mass communication. However, adherents of the Nur movement are selective in their openness to modernity. The movement is also a critique of several characteristics of modernity. Nursi's teachings challenge individualism. As Serif Mardin points out, Said Nursi's primary aim was always to "repersonalize Turkish society through the personalized stamp of the Risale-i Nur" (p. 12). This was an attempt to preserve strong communal ties against the individualistic tendencies of modernization.

The movement has been largely a product of the tension between Islamization and secularization, which originated in the late nineteenth century when the Young Ottomans tried to reconcile Islam and Western constitutionalism during the late Ottoman period. Said Nursi suggested compromises in order to deal with this tension under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. He challenged the division of education into three separate streams: medrese (Ar., madrasa, religious school), tekke (Sufi hospice), and secular education. His suggestion was the reintroduction of religious studies to secular schools. His aim was to incorporate competent ulema into the tekke. After the fall of the empire, Said Nursi visited the new parliament in Ankara once in 1922. Being frustrated by the cold reception and tension, he withdrew from politics for good. After the consolidation of the secular Turkish Republic in 1923, the tension between secularizing and Islamizing forces never ceased. Aiming at a radical break from the Ottoman Empire, the founding father, Ataturk, initiated a series of secularizing reforms that relegated Islam to the private sphere and de-Islamized the public sphere, (for example, the ban of the fez and veil). When the sects were banned in 1926, the Nur movement continued to expand rapidly and soon after was seen as a threat to the secular state. The pendulum swung from repression to tolerance for Islam, when a multiparty system was inititated in the 1950s.

The Nur movement remained suspicious of politics. Some followers became close to certain parties and state bureaucrats. The movement was known for its sympathy for and strong ties to the Democrat Party in the 1950s. Later, some Nur followers were associated with Necmeddin Erbakan and his religious party, National Salvation (1973–1981). However, the strong faith and national feelings mobilized by the movement did not become a part of a separate political party.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the political disagreements and economic differences among the followers of Nur led to fragmentation. The largest and most effective group that emerged out of Nur is the Gulen Community movement, led by Fethullah Guler. Beginning in the early 1990s, it became organized and institutionalized not only in Turkey but also internationally, particularly in the new states ofCentral Asia. Although the Gulen movement inherited the nationalist and modernist orientation of Nur, it deviated from its forefathers by the engagements with the secular state, and its expansion to the international realm.