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Three phenomena within the Islamic Umma

Since the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the attention given by academicians, politicians, and journalists to movements within the Muslim world which promote and carry out acts of violence against civilian populations has tended to overshadow some of the more dynamic and significant developments taking place today within the umma, the international community of Muslims.  I am referring to transnational Muslim movements and organizations that are actively working for peace, interreligious dialogue, minority rights, education and development, religious freedom, and gender justice in the Muslim world.

Precisely because such movements unequivocally and emphatically condemn violence and even incline toward a radical Qur’anic pacifism, they tend to be overlooked in analyses of contemporary Islamic currents of thought, organization and activity.  Yet such movements shape the vision, motivate the commitment, and inspire the social and educational projects of millions of Muslims in many countries of the Middle East, Asia, Europe and North America and are, in fact, far more influential in shaping the outlook and vision of Muslims than the isolated circles of those who are involved in violent and terrorist organizations.

In this paper, I intend to analyze three such transnational Muslim movements and to indicate the role they are playing as agents of personal and social transformation in today’s globalized culture.  The first is the global network, some 9 million strong, of the students of the Risale-i Nur, the voluminous commentary on the Qur’an authored by the 20th Century Kurdish/Turkish thinker Said Nursi.  The second movement, which is spiritually related to the first, is the educational and cultural movement centered about the person of the contemporary Turkish scholar Fethullah Gulen.  Thirdly, I will take up the Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN), an organization with members in over 16 Asian countries which is involved in a variety of social projects and causes.

Admittedly, these phenomena are asymmetrical.  The first two are movements of individuals united by a common religious vision and purpose rather than organizations with bylaws and membership lists; they derive their inspiration respectively from the writings and sermons of the charismatic figures of Said Nursi and Fethullah Gulen.  They began as national, and perhaps nationalist, movements, but have become transnational and appeal today to Muslims in many parts of the umma, particularly to those living in the West.  The third association, AMAN, is a young but fast-growing organization that has no individual as founder, no national origin or ideological center (its administrative offices are in centrally-located but predominantly Buddhist Bangkok), no authority beyond that of acting as a non-binding moral force upon its constituents.

A.  Said Nursi and the Risale-i Nur movement

1. The evolving historical and political context to his thought

One might say that the central challenge facing Muslims in the past century has been that of striving to free the worldwide Muslim community, the umma, from domination by non-Muslim forces.  Up to the end of the colonial period, Muslim activists were united in seeking the end of colonial rule, but they differed radically regarding the kind of state they wanted to replace it.  Nationalists wanted a European-style nation state, which they saw as the most suitable for bringing about general prosperity and building modern structures of government.  By contrast, socialists opted for a single-party system with a centrally-planned economy, and social goals of land reform and universal education and health care.  Those Muslims influenced by Wahhabi or salafi thought sought the establishment of an Islamic state, with civil application of the shari’a and legislative guidance by the ulama’, or religious scholars.

To the salafi-oriented Muslims, nationalism and socialism represented two sides of the same atheistic coin, the idolatry of nation, on the one hand, and of the masses, on the other.  Both arose, in the salafi view, from a mindset that relegated God and the Divine will to a private sphere of devotional religiosity and had no role or contribution to make the affairs of state, economy or social organization. 

The Ottoman state, where Said Nursi was born, and the Turkish Republic, where he lived most of his life, was never subject to colonial rule, (although things would inevitably have moved in that direction had Atatürk and his armed forces not intervened and prevented the humiliating Treaty of Sèvres, forced upon Turkey in 1920 by the Allied Powers, from being implemented).  Yet the national issue remained a burning one for Turks throughout the century.  What form should the successor state to the Ottoman Empire take?  What should be the attitude of believing, practicing Muslims to the Kemalist reforms?  What role could Islam play in the emerging, evolving republic that was in the process of formation and solidify solidification

Turkey in the 20th Century has been characterized as a nation Afull of the obsession of dichotomies: secularity or religiosity, modernity or tradition, scientific or revealed truth, reason or faith, state or umma, authority or democracy.  Turks were forced by circumstances to choose, and the resulting choices affected their political and social position, their circle of friends and acquaintances, and often their careers and professional life.  Once having made their choices, many Turks felt they were Atrapped in a set of ideological expectations not of their making and were looking for a way out.  The achievement of Said Nursi and, a generation later, of Fethullah Gulen, was their success in offering disciples a way to move beyond these dead-end dichotomies in order to build a less fragmented future.         

Said Nursi’s approach to the questions posed by his society evolved throughout his life.  Born in 1877 in the village of Nurs in the predominantly Kurdish-speaking province of Bitlis in eastern Turkey, Nursi’s early religious formation consisted of the study of the religious sciences in various medreses in Eastern Turkey, where he claims to have been influenced especially by Islamic reformers such as Namik Kemal, Jamal al-Din Afghani and Muhammad Abduh.  He became interested in politics and favored the views of Afghani regarding the unity or ittihad of the international Islamic community.

After his early experience of fighting with the Ottoman army on the Russian Front in World War I, when he was taken captive and transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia at the time of the October Revolution, and his early involvement at the local and national level in the politics of the young Turkish Republic, Nursi ultimately rejected both military and political solutions to the problems of the umma, and devoted himself to teaching personal transformation through study of the Qur’an as the path to regeneration of the Muslim community.  In formulating his reflections on the Qur’an in relation to the needs of modern society, he eventually organized his extensive writings in the form of a long commentary on the Qur’an which he and his disciples call the Risale-i Nur, the AMessage of Light.  In doing so, he reformulated Qur’anic teaching in such a way as to foster a spiritual transformation in the individual Muslim which was to be the basis for the renewal of the Muslim community.

Thus, after an activist youth marked by involvement in political and military affairs, Nursi abandoned interest in both national politics and geopolitical relations and devoted his life to a study of the Qur’an in the light of modern sciences.  His starting point focused on the clash of world views represented by positivist philosophy, on the one hand, and by religious faith, on the other.  He believed that the natural sciences, if divorced from a moral vision that could alone hold them together and give them direction, would lead inevitably to egoism, violence, destructive and self-destructive behavior.  It was the role of revealed truth to avoid spiritual disaster by forming people with a moral vision in which, as he states: AConscience is illuminated by the religious sciences, and the mind is illuminated by the sciences of civilization.  Wisdom occurs through the interaction of these.

Nursi’s conviction of the need to build a united body of knowledge obtained, on the one hand, from a study of the religious disciplines and, on the other, from all that is involved in Athe sciences of civilization led him to reformulate traditional Islamic thought in terms of the demands of modernity.  It is particularly in three fields that Nursi’s reformulation can be seen: his views on peace, his critique of modern civilization, and his call to Muslim-Christian unity.  These points are significant in that they are the elements that characterize the movements inspired by Nursi’s thought and distinguish them from other modern Muslim movements:

2. Towards a Qur’anic pacifism

Although in his youth Nursi’s understanding of jihad led him to defend the Ottoman state against the Russian invasion of the Caucasus, Nursi later declared that the time of the Ajihad of the sword was over, and the pressing need of the modern age was Athe jihad of the word, concluding that the resort to violence showed a lack of self-confidence in the truth brought by Islam.  It is tempting to speculate that it was his experience of World War I, which was particularly bitter in Turkey and resulted in a 30% decline in the population of Anatolia, which led Nursi to his pacifist position.   

Nursi’s criticism of materialist tendencies in society and politics, and his opposition to Turkey’s engagement in wars and unholy alliances, caused him to be imprisoned repeatedly.  As his thoughts continued to develop, by the time of the Second World War, the worldly events erupting around him hardly penetrated his awareness.  He devoted his days and months in prison to the study of the Qur’an and, as he states, AIn these last four years, I have followed neither the stages of the war, nor its results, nor known whether or not peace has been declared.

He sees a tendency in modern governments and rulers which is relevant for current discussions of globalization and nationalism.  He criticizes modern governments for fomenting a kind of false nationalism, which in reality amounts to a type of racism, by picturing those of another nationality or religion as the enemy against whom war must be waged.  Meanwhile, the governments concentrate on providing amusements to distract people by promoting sense gratification and favoring consumerist market policies to Acreate needs.  The result, he states, is Aa sort of superficial happiness for about 20% of mankind and casting the other 80% into distress and poverty.  By contrast to the behavior of political elites, the Qur’an, he states, proposes an alternative to the use of force to resolve conflicts, proposing instead negotiation, compromise and uprightness, rather than the employment of brute force with the very short-sighted goal of Awinning the war.

Said Nursi’s opposition to war as an inhumane and ultimately useless endeavor aroused much opposition for, in the Turkish Republic as in any other nation, all citizens were expected to support whatever wars were being waged, and anyone opposing the war was accused of disloyalty.  In fact, Nursi was astute in his awareness that ruling parties and cliques have frequently fomented conflicts and wars in an attempt to increase their popularity and rally support for what otherwise would be unpopular or incompetent regimes.  Nursi notes that he was often challenged because of his commitment to peace.  Critics claimed that war against British and Italian incursions provided an opportunity to revive Islamic zeal and to assert the moral strength of the nation.  They charged Nursi, who proposed prayers for peace and negotiated settlement, with indirectly supporting the invaders’ aims.

Said Nursi replied that he wanted release from the attacks of aggressors, but not by using the same methods which the attackers were employing.  In other words, he rejected the practice of opposing force by force.  Religion teaches people to seek truth and uprightness, he taught, not to try to achieve their aims by use of force.  In consequence, he felt that the students of the Risale-i Nur could better use their time studying the Qur’an than by engaging in military service.  Later in his life he was asked whether freely relinquishing one’s rights for the sake of peace could not be considered a form of compromise with wrongdoing.  Again reflecting on his prison experiences, he responded that AA person who is in the right, is fair.  He will sacrifice his penny’s worth of principle for the general peace, which is worth a hundred times that.

In the long run, he concludes, the preoccupation with current events and international crises is of secondary importance to seeking the personal, interior transformation that comes through the study of Scripture.  Said Nursi carried this principle to an extreme degree, as he recounts: AFor a full two years [under house arrest] in Kastamonu and seven years in other places I knew nothing of the conflicts and wars in the world, and whether or not peace had been declared, or who else was involved in the fighting.  I was not curious about it and did not ask, and for nearly three years did not listen to the radio that was playing close by me.  But with the Risale-i Nur I triumphantly confronted unbelief, which destroys eternal life, and transforms the life of this world even into compounded pain and suffering.

This attitude, which places a higher value on the transformational power of the study of God’s Word than on current events, presents a challenge to modern people for whom the daily newspapers and evening news on television are fixed appointments in their daily schedules.  However, one can see in Said Nursi’s practice the freedom of the honest individual who renounces an obsession with transitory events which will be forgotten in a few years in favor of the search for eternal, unchangeable truth presented in the Word of God.

3. Critique of modern civilization

One of the most difficult challenges facing the modern Muslim in 20th Century Anatolia, to whom Said Nursi directed his Risale, was the need to assess critically the modern civilization in which they were living.  Under the guidance and leadership of Atatürk, the institutions of European civilization were adopted as the model of progress and prosperity to be emulated by Turks.  The Islamic practices and way of life that had been handed down for centuries were seen as relics of the past and obstacles to progress.  The spontaneous reaction of many religious leaders was simply to condemn the Republic as godless and depraved and to call for a return to traditional religious values.

Nursi’s analysis is more subtle and articulated.  He acknowledges that modern life is a bewildering, mix of contradictions.  There is much in modern civilization that is attractive, much that is useful and that makes life easier, more comfortable, and more enjoyable.  At the same time, anyone who takes seriously the gift of religious faith is aware that modern civilization often sets itself in opposition to a life of faith and obedience to God.

For believers, it is not simply that modern civilization tends to exile God to the margins of daily consciousness and activity.  Modern civilization also offers a value system that is at odds with that of religion.  It defines happiness differently from religious thought.  Success and failure are counted in different terms.  Self-fulfillment is regarded as a basic human motivation, and possession of consumer goods is considered a mark of personal achievement.  It follows that competition becomes the moving force of modern life, and the world comes to be divided into the winners and the losers.

Those for whom God is the beginning, the center, and the end of existence, and for whom God’s will is the criterion of good and evil, need a way to sort out what is valuable in modern civilization from what is ephemeral and destructive.  In my opinion, it is the lifetime achievement of Said Nursi that in the Risale-i Nur he was able to provide modern Muslims with the interpretative tools they need to analyze modern civilization, so that they can distinguish what is of genuine and lasting value in modern life from the harmful and self-destructive tendencies that lie beneath its glittering surface.

Nursi’s analysis of modern civilization is complex, and here I can only mention several aspects that have influenced the lives of his followers.  What we are accustomed to call Amodern civilization or AWestern civilization Said Nursi usually referred to as AEuropean civilization, or simply as AEurope.  Modernity, not only in the sense of scientific and technological advances, but also in its philosophical underpinnings, first took root in Europe and from there was brought to every corner of the world.  Today much of the leadership in propagating the modern world-view and life-style has been taken up by the U.S.A., which employs its extensive financial, military, organizational, and communication resources to this end.

When Nursi makes his famous statement, AEurope is two, he is really writing about the modern world.  Looking at the world at the start of the 21st Century, religious believers can easily recognize Nursi’s basic insight that AModern civilization is two [i.e., Atwo-faced or Atwo-sided.]  From the duality of modern civilization as his point of departure, Nursi posits the need to discern and distinguish among the contradictory phenomena that go to make up globalized modernity.  If Nursi’s evaluation of European civilization can sometimes appear to focus on the negative, it is because he has no quarrel with the Afirst Europe, which retains the values of faith, justice, and social harmony.  He is concerned rather with warning people about the destructive elements in modern civilization so they can take the necessary measures to withstand its dangerous charms.  He is seeking to refute the corrupt Europe’s false claims and lay bare its harmful philosophical infrastructure.

In numerous places, Nursi points up the contrast between the societal values proposed by modern civilization and the vision of society presented by the Qur’an.  To Nursi the Qur’anic vision differs only in details from what had been proposed by all the prophets before Muhammad, hence it is a vision that Muslims share with Atrue Christians who genuinely follow the teachings of the prophet Jesus.  Jesus’ Christian followers sought to build Europe on these prophetic values, but this effort was sabotaged from the beginning by their reliance on Greco-Roman philosophy.  This insight, rare among Muslim scholars, is the basis for his call for AMuslim-Christian unity, which has had profound effects on the thinking and practice of his many disciples.

4. The need for Muslim-Christian unity

In any study of the development of Christian-Muslim relations in the 20th century, special attention must be given to the writings and preaching of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi.  Said Nursi’s advocacy of an intellectual and spiritual dialogue between Muslims and Christians dates back to 1911, a full half-century before the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council urged Christians and Muslims to resolve their differences and move beyond the conflicts of the past to build relations characterized by respect and cooperation.  Bediuzzaman’s repeated promotion of Muslim-Christian dialogue is even more striking in that his recommendations frequently date from times of tension and even warfare between Muslim and Christian communities.

In Nursi’s view, for those who desire to lead their lives as much as possible according to God’s will, whether Muslim or Christian, a critique of modern civilization is inescapable.  In 1946, shortly after the end of the Second World War, he stated: ABelievers should now unite, not only with their Muslim fellow-believers, but with truly religious and pious Christians, disregarding questions of dispute and not arguing over them, for absolute disbelief is on the attack.

Said Nursi believed that the opponent of human happiness and ethical uprightness is unbelief.  Unbelief is not only theoretical but practical, manifested in people choosing to find their own path through life, not seeking divine guidance, not caring about God’s will or wise design for humankind, not wishing to give up their own pet desires and ideas to submit to God’s teaching about human nature and destiny.  In seeking to affirm a divinely guided way of life in the modern age, said Nursi, Muslims find their natural allies in those Christians who are committed to following the teachings of Jesus and who seek to live according to the truth.

Facing the challenge of Aaggressive atheism, Muslims should unite not only with other Muslims, but also with the truly pious Christians.  For such a common effort to succeed, he held, Christians and Muslims will have to refrain, at least for some time, from disputes between these two families of believers.  In saying this, Said Nursi was not denying that there are differences between Muslims and Christians or that those differences are unimportant.  His point is that concentrating obsessively on differences can blind both Muslims and Christian to the more important common task they share, that of offering the modern world a vision of human life and society in which God is central and God’s will is the norm of moral values.

This negative current, he held, seeks to destroy both Muslims and Christians by alienating them from the source of spiritual and moral values and by creating enmity between Christians and Muslims.  All those who believe in God and seek to promote a theocentric approach to life must recognize the dangers involved:  AIt is essential, he wrote, Athat missionaries, pious Christians as well as Nurcus, be extremely careful, for with the idea of defending itself against the attacks of the religions of Islam and Christianity, >the current from the North’ will try to destroy the accord of Islam and the missionaries.  >The current from the North’ is an obvious reference to the Soviet Union, and it is not surprising that these words of Said Nursi date from 1945-1946, a time when atheistic communism was extending its rule throughout Eastern Europe.
It is a sad fact of human history that Christians and Muslims, despite their nature as communities of people called to worship and obey the one and same God, have often been in conflict and even at war with one another.  They have seen each other as enemies to be resisted and overcome.  Energies which should have been employed to cooperate in the establishment of God-centered societies have been dissipated in mutual suspicion, domination and bloodshed.  Writing at a time of serious tension and massacre between the two communities at the end of the First World War, Said Nursi called for an end to this historical impasse.  He affirmed the right of Christian people such as the Greeks and Armenians to liberty as something commanded by the shari’a.  He called upon his countrymen to recognize the deeper problem as one that lay at the heart of their own ignorance and hard-heartedness.  Nursi went on to state that the real enemy is one group of Christians or another, but rather the situation of degradation into which all had fallen.  He said that the great enemeies facing both Muslims and Christians in the modern world are three: ignorance, poverty, and disunity.

Said Nursi was aware that Muslim-Christian relations are not limited to an alliance of believers to confront critically the dangers of modernist ideology, to resolve conflicts, and to empathize with innocent victims, but should move in the direction of peace, reconciliation, and even friendship.  Five years before his death, in supporting the Baghdad pact, he noted that an advantage of the pact was not only that Turks would gain 400 million brothers and sisters among Muslim peoples, but that the international accord would also gain for Muslim Turks Athe friendship of 8000 million Christians and be a step toward a much-needed peace and general reconciliation between the two communities of faith.

In his final years, Said Nursi exerted his personal efforts toward reconciliation and friendship with Christians.  In 1950, he sent a collection of his works to Pope Pius XII in Rome and received in reply, on 22 February 1951, a personal letter of thanks.  One observer has noted that it was only a little over ten years at the Second Vatican Council that the Catholic church proclaimed its respect and esteem for Muslims and asserted that Islam was a genuine path of salvation.  In the same way, a few years later in 1953, Said Nursi visited the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in Istanbul to seek cooperation between Muslims and Christians in the face of aggressive atheism.

In all this, Said Nursi offered original and thought-provoking insights on Muslim-Christian dialogue and cooperation, holding that Muslims and Christians together can build a civil­i­za­tion according to God’s plan in which human dignity, justice and fellowship will be the norm.  This is possible if they seek to ground their mutual relationship on love.  In his famous Damascus Sermon, he states that the Fourth Word on which civilization is to be built is love.  AThat which is most worthy of love, he states, Ais love, and that most deserving of enmity is enmity.  It is love and loving that render people’s social life secure and that lead to happiness - it is these which are most worthy of love and being loved.   AThe time for enmity and hostility is finished,25 he concluded.

5. Influence upon his followers

Said Nursi died in 1960 at the age of 84.  He was buried in Urfa near the traditional birthplace of the prophet Abraham, but the military feared that if his place of burial were known, the tomb would become a site of pilgrimage and mobilization among his followers.  They secretly disinterred his body during the night and until today, the final burial place of Said Nursi is not known.

His followers call themselves the students of the Risale-i Nur, although outsiders sometimes use the somewhat pejorative term ANurcu. Those in the movement dislike the term, as they do not consider themselves the followers of an individual, but rather students of the Qur’an assisted by Said Nursi’s commentary.  The Risale-i Nur students were kept under close surveillance by the military in Turkey until the mid-1980s.  Some were arrested, others were blacklisted and prevented from entering universities or obtaining jobs; their homes and dormitories were raided for handwritten copies of the Risale-i Nur, which was forbidden to be published and passed from hand-to-hand as a kind of samizat. 

Today the Gulen movement is no longer persecuted in Turkey and carries out its activities openly.  The Risale-i Nur has been published in its entirety in Turkish and parts have been translated into many languages.  In the 1980s, the Gulen movement spilled out of Turkey, mainly by means of Turkish immigrants to Northern and Western Europe, in the 1990s it reached the former Soviet nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and most recently is extending its activities into Southeast Asia.  Two regions of the Muslim world has not met with much success are the Arab world and the countries of South Asia.

M. Hakan Yavuz of the University of Utah estimates that the number of adherents of the Nur movement is somewhere between 5-6 million members.26  They meet twice a week to study and discuss the Risale-i Nur.  Such groups have been set up as far afield as Manila, Kuala Lumpur, and Makassar in Indonesia, and in New Jersey and Texas in the United States.

What is significant is the influence that the ideas of Said Nursi have had upon the members of this movement.  Their critique of modern civilization, their peace activism, and their openness to dialogue with Christians can all be traced to key themes of the Risale-i Nur.    

Twice a week many of these believers meet in >Nurcu textual reading circles, known as dershanes'.7 Currently there are approximately 5,500 such groups - all meeting to reflect on Said Nursi's magum opus the Risale-i Nur.

Unity with Christians

Today, over 40 years after his death, Said Nursi’s thoughts on the role of Islam as peacemaker continue to influence Muslims and others.  For example, the movement associated with the name of Fethullah Gülen is a contemporary expression of Islamic values inspired by the words of the Risale-i Nur.  For Mr. Gülen and his colleagues, Islam teaches the importance of education, of character-building, of dialogue, of forgiveness and love, of making peace and collaborating for peace.  I myself, like many of the students o the Risale-i Nur, have learned that religion is not about compulsion or coercion, sectarianism or nationalism, violence or conflict.  True religion is responding to the way that God wants us to live on this earth by establishing love, peace, and human solidarity and working for the dignity and well-being of all.

why successful?  offered an alternative out of nat.soc.Isl.

iginating in modern Turkey, but now extending their activities throughout Europe and North America, Central Asia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, and into East and Southeast Asia, derive their inspiration from the charismatic figures of Said Nursi and Mr. Gülen.  The third  

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Rizal on war

three movements for independence

Nursi’s Kurdish identity

Gulen’s condemnation of WTC

3. The Asian Muslim Action Network (A.M.A.N.)

The third organization under consideration is the Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN).  In structure and inspiration, AMAN is quite different from both the ANurculuk, or followers of Said Nursi, and the movement associated with Fethullah Gülen.  By contrast, AMAN is not focused on a charismatic individual, nor does it arise out of the historical and cultural experience of being Muslim in a single nation or culture.

AMAN has been, from its inception, an international network of progressive Muslims in about 15 Asian countries, bringing together Aindividuals, groups and associations of Muslims in Asia subscribing to a progressive and enlightened approach to Islam.  It was founded in October, 1990, by a small but influential group of Muslim scholars and social activists in order to respond, as it says in the AMAN charter, to the numerous challenges faced by the peoples of Asia Aranging from mass poverty to elite corruption, materialistic life style, increasing ethnic, religious, and communal conflict, violence against women and children, and environmental degradation.  From this list of concerns, it can be seen that the scope of the organization is quite wide, addressing both structural issues as well as those requiring personal transformation.

At the Second Plenary Assembly of AMAN, held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the year 2000, on the 10th anniversary of the founding of the organization, Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer of Bombay, India, the chairman of AMAN, stated the motivation for creating the network: AWith the advent of democracies in South and Southeast Asian nations, awareness about democratic rights, human rights, and women’s rights has been growing fast.  However, although there was a great deal of secular theorizing on the issue, there was a lack of Islamic theorizing, and still less of activism.27  In order words, AMAN is responding to the need felt by progressive Muslims in Asia to reflect on questions of civil rights, human rights, and the rights of women from an explicitly Islamic point of view, as well as the need for Muslim activists to work for those rights.

In the past 15 years, the organization has grown quickly and has established local chapters throughout Asia, including China, Afghanistan, and the republics of Central Asia.  By the time of the Third Plenary Assembly, held in Bangkok in December, 2003, participants from 21 Asian nations took part.  AMAN is quite open to working together in shared programs with other organizations, as well as with bodies linked with one or another religion in Asia.  As such, AMAN has undertaken joint initiatives with Christians on peace education and on questions of justice for ethnic minorities, with the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, a continental association of 17 Catholic bishops’ conferences in Asia, and with the Christian Conference of Asia, an ecumenical body composed of over 120 Churches and Synods, of Orthodox and Reformation origin, in Asia.

AMAN’s approach to Islamic practice is what a former president of the organization, the Malaysian political scientist Chandra Muzaffar, calls a Avalues approach to Islam,  which he contrasts to a fiqh [i.e., jurisprudential] approach, with its Arigid religious-secular dichotomy.  Muzaffar states: AIt is only too apparent that a non-dogmatic approach to Islam which recognizes the primacy of eternal, universal spiritual and moral values while acknowledging the importance of rituals, symbols and practices is the most sane and sensible way of living religion in today’s world.  I describe this as the values approach to Islam.28 

AMAN activists can trace their roots to figures in Islamic history who emphasized the values of Ajustice, honesty, sincerity, compassion, and simplicity of life over legalistic and ritualistic prescriptions.  It is instructive to see the individuals whom Muzaffar holds up as models of Islamic life for modern Muslims.  Among the forerunners to be emulated by value-oriented Muslims today he mentions Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law of Muhammad who refused to engage in battle against other Muslims, the calif Umar ibn Al’Khattab, noted for his commitment to just governance, the early ascetic Abu Dharr al-Ghiffari, the 20th Century educational reformer Muhammad Abduh, more recent Muslim thinkers such as the Indo-Pakistani Muhammad Iqbal, the Algerian Malik Benabi, and the Pakistan-American Fazlur Rahman, mystics like Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, Ibn Arabi, and Shabistari, and distinguished Muslim scholars like Fakhr al-Din Razi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Khaldun who Acame into conflict with religious elites who derived their authority from perpetuating an Islam build around rituals, symbols, and practices. 

One of the most effective projects of AMAN is its educational work with Asian youth.  The organizations conducts [how often are AMAN courses?] training courses and youth camps focused on developing Muslim leadership which can address the principal AMAN concerns of poverty, social justice, environmental degradation, human rights, questions of peace, harmony, and reconciliation, development issues and advocacy on behalf of Amarginalized and vulnerable sectors of society such as women, children, and ethnic and religious minorities.  AMAN undertakes Atraining for trainers workshops to prepare local and national animators and annually awards scholarships for researchers working on questions in the above-mentioned fields.  [How many participants of these courses? How many young people have been trained in these courses? How many scholarships?]

The stated concern for the Amarginalized and vulnerable brings AMAN into the area of human rights. In 2001, in response to the decision of the General Assembly in Dhaka, the organization set up AAMAN Watch, as a regional Muslim expression of Human Rights Watch, monitoring human rights violations in predominantly Muslim regions of Asia, as well as the violation of the civil rights of Muslims in both majority and minority situations.  AMAN Watch is one of the cooperating associations in the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the Religious Groups for Human Rights (RGHR) association, which is an Asian coalition of Buddhist, Muslim and Christian organizations advocating human rights.29

AMAN has given particular attention to the situations of ethnic and religious minorities.  Most countries of Asia have minority groups distinguished by language, religion, race, or cultural background from the majority.  Almost invariably, such groups suffer various forms of discrimination: the minority groups are often mistrusted and unwelcome in the dominant national society, treated with bureaucratic resistance and indifference, and in some instances subject to violence and persecution.  The fact that their native language and religion is usually not that of the dominant majority (Hindus in Pakistan, Christians and indigenous in India, Buddhists in Bangladesh, Christians in Myanmar, Muslims and indigenous in the Philippines etc.) further isolate the ethnic minorities.  AMAN championed the cause of the minorities by publicizing their plight and complaints at both the Dhaka and the Bangkok assemblies.  Together with their Christian partners (FABC, CCA), AMAN has sponsored an Asia-wide consultation on the situation of ethnic minorities, and have announced plans for a joint study of the forms of discrimination experienced by Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tract tribes.

By contrast to persuasive influence that Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen have respectively played  in the movements they inspired, AMAN has no single intellectual mentor, but is guided by a constellation of prominent Asian scholars.  A survey of some of the more important figures will give an idea of the intellectual orientation of AMAN leadership.

Asghar Ali Engineer, AMAN Chairman, is an Indian Muslim.  Son of a religious scholar of a prominent Bohra (Ismaili) family, Asghar Ali was trained in the religious sciences and also in engineering, hence the name.  He has been a fervent advocate of reform in the Bohra community (for which he was once set upon by paid thugs and beaten severely) and has written extensively on communal violence, women’s rights, liberation theology, and the role of Islam in secular societies.

Chandra Muzaffar is a Malaysian, with a doctorate in political science.

Imtiyaz Yusuf,

Chaiwat

Although AMAN is predominantly a Muslim organization based on Islamic principles, the organization is not exclusive, but accepts non-Muslim members who agree to the ideals and goals of the organization.  It is also open to non-Muslim participants and speakers at its various programs, non only to Christians, which would not be so surprising among Muslim associations,  but also to Hindus and Buddhists, which is quite rare.

One of the joint programs which has been undertaken in recent years in  

aof the o acc

working for the eradication of poverty, environmental protection, human rights promotion and protection; building awareness and educational campaign for and lobbying for policy advocacy on issues of social justice, development and peace especially for marginalized and vulnerable sectors of society such as women, children, ethnic and religious minorities. AMAN also takes it upon itself to be the initiative from the Muslim faith community toward interfaith and inter-cultural dialogue with other peoplesÕÕ of religion. 

In the 18th-19th Centuries, by way of the naturalist and materialist philosophies propounded by the scholars of the Enlightenment, even the vestiges of prophetic teaching which remained in European civilization were attacked and abandoned.  Thus, the Enlightenment philosophers set about building Amodern Europe on principles of their own making, and modern Western civilization is the fruit of their labors.  Since the principles on which they based the new civilization were the result of their human rationalist speculations which rejected the teaching of the prophets, modern civilization offers a very different set of values which should characterize social relations.

Nursi saw the same process that had previously occurred in Europe taking place in Turkey in his own day.  Working on the notion that religion was an obstacle to progress, many in the Turkish Republic were attempting to replace religious values and way of life with ways of acting derived from modern Europe, and consequently they opposed the dissemination and study of the Risale-i Nur.  In his defense in the Afyon court, Nursi pointed out the futility of the campaign to replace a religious outlook with one of secular modernity.  AAn irreligious Muslim does not resemble any other person without religion.  No sort of progress or civilization can take the place of religion, or righteousness, or the learning of the truths of belief in particular, which are the innate need of the people of this country, who for a thousand years have illumined the world with their religion and heroically preserved their firmness of faith in the face of the assaults of the whole world.30

Those promoting modern values claim that they are simply interested in providing a good life for the majority of the people.  Upon examining this concept of the good life, Nursi concludes that it is one of the Adeceptive, opiate fantasies of civilization.31 What the concept involves is limited to responding to bodily needs, on the supposition that if people have food in their stomachs, a roof over their heads, and access to medical treatment when needed, they have achieved Athe good life.  To Nursi, this is a short-sighted understanding of the true needs of humankind.  A person also has spiritual needs, which cannot be met by the facilities of modernity.  AO foolish friend! Do you suppose your life’s duty is restricted to following the good life according to the requisites of civilization and to gratifying the physical appetites? Do you suppose the sole aim of the delicate and subtle senses, the sensitive faculties and members, the well-ordered limbs and systems, the inquisitive feelings and senses that make up your life are restricted to satisfying the low desires of the base soul in this fleeting life?32

The basic problem, according to Nursi, is that modern civilization has clouded people’s minds so that they are unable to see the value of the life of the spirit.  Modern life focuses on the immediate, the temporal, the ephemeral, and finds it difficult to see beyond to questions of eternal importance.  AAt this time, due to the domination of European civilization and the supremacy of natural philosophy and the preponderance of the conditions of worldly life, minds and hearts have become scattered, and endeavor and favor divided. Minds have become strangers to non-material matters.33  Instead of seeking the truly good life intended by God for people, men and women are caught up in a rat race of seeking wealth, prestige, pleasure, and political power in the mistaken fantasy that these things will bring them happiness. 

The psychological toll of modernity is high, and people can become frozen into inactivity.  Modern man, Asince his thought is submerged in philosophy, his mind plunged in politics, and his heart is giddy at the life of this world,34is unable to evaluate seriously questions of eternal weight.  His mind becomes dulled to reality and he becomes unable to take serious decision and to exert his creativity in a positive direction.  AThrough philosophical investigation and natural science, and the seductive amusements of dissolute civilization and its intoxicated passions, sick philosophy has both increased the world’s frozen state and inaction, and made denser heedlessness, and increased its opaqueness and turbidity, and caused the Maker and the hereafter to be forgotten.35  By contrast, the teaching of the Qur’an Agives the world a transparency and removes its turbidity.

4. Contrast between European and Qur’anic civilization

In the aphorisms that make up the Seeds of Reality, Nursi succinctly summarizes some elements of difference between the two visions.  AModern civilization, he states, has been founded on five negative principles.
1. Its point of support is force, the mark of which is aggression.
2. Its aim and goal is self-interest, the mark of which is competitive jostling.
3. Its principle in life is conflict, the mark of which is strife.
4. The bond holding the masses together is racism and negative nationalism, which is
nourished through devouring others; its mark is collision.
5. Its enticement is inciting lust and passion and gratifying the desires.36

The five principles might be stated succinctly as follows:
1) might makes right,
2) self-interest and competition,
3) the law of the jungle, everyone for himself,
4) my race and nation are superior,
5) I have a right to whatever I want. 

To these principles, which Nursi sees as both destructive and self-destructive, he contrasts the teaching of the Qur’an:

The civilization the shari>a of Muhammad (PBUH) comprises and commands is this: its point of support is truth instead of force, the mark of which is justice and harmony. Its goal is virtue in place of self-benefit, the mark of which is love and attraction. Its means of unity are the ties of religion, country, and class, in place of racism and nationalism, and the mark of these is sincere brotherhood, peace, and only defense against external aggression. In life is the principle of mutual assistance instead of the principle of conflict, the mark of which is accord and solidarity. It offers guidance instead of lust, the mark of which is human progress and spiritual advancement.37

The contrast is clear; the Qur’an proposes very different principles.  In the civilization envisioned by the Qur’an (and the teachings of the earlier prophets):
1) it is truth, not might, which makes right.  
2) Virtue, non self-interest, is the proper motivation for human acts.  
3) Unity rather than conflict should be the basis for social relations, and
4) mutual assistance instead of cutthroat competition.  
5) It upholds divine guidance rather than human whims as the norm for ethical behavior. 

A society built on such principles will be characterized by values like justice, harmony, love, peace, brotherhood, and solidarity.  It will attract others by virtue of its own good qualities, rather than by imposing its views or by dominating and looking down on others.

When a civilization accepts the principle of Amight makes right, the result is injustice.  When civilization operates on the principle of immediate gratification of desires, the result is laziness, inactivity, and torpor.  Nursi accuses Muslim societies of having too often adopted these negative principles of modern civilization and the result is Ahunger, financial loss, and physical trials.  The Qur’an teaches hard work and industry and to share one’s wealth with the poor.  But Muslims have not lived according to this teaching and followed instead the principles of modern civilization.  He says, AWhen comparing modern civilization with the principles of the Qur’an, all immorality and instability in the social life of man proceeds from two sources: 1) >Once my stomach is full, what do I care if others die of hunger?’ and 2) >You work, and I’ll eat.’38

5.  Destructive social, political, and spiritual consequences

The effects of trying to recreate society on the basis of a materialist outlook are not found only in the cultural field, but also in the economic and political realm.  Nursi saw a clear ideological development from the principles of the French revolution which led eventually to dehumanizing values of Soviet communism.  In rejecting and even oppressing the sacred, man removes all limits to class and national conflict and ends in anarchy.  Applying the Qur’anic teaching about Gog and Magog to modern history, Nursi traces a direct development from French libertarianism to communism to anarchy.

Socialism sprang up in the French Revolution from the seed of libertarianism. Since socialism destroyed certain sacred matters, the ideas it inculcated turned into bolshevism. Because bolshevism corrupted even more sacred moral and human values and those of the human heart, of course the seeds it sowed will produce anarchy, which recognizes no restrictions whatsoever and has respect for nothing. For if respect and compassion quit the human heart, those with such hearts become exceedingly cruel beasts and can no longer be governed through politics.39

Nursi sees the almost continual warfare that has occurred in the modern age as the most tragic effect of ordering society on materialist principles.  He views the two World Wars as Aa manifestation of Divine Wrath in punishment for the vice and misguidance of civilization.40  This need not be understood as God unleashing divine wrath to bring about wars as punishment for humankind’s misdeeds, but rather in God allowing the natural effects of human error and arrogance to run their destructive course.  If people build civilization on the principles of conflict, competition, and enmity, the result will inevitably be war and mutual destruction.  He comments on the Qur’anic passage about Athe blowers on knots in the context of 20th Century history.

The sentence the blowers on knots >coincides’ with the dates when due to their ambition and greed the Europeans tyrants who caused the two World Wars, instigated a change of Sultan and the Balkan and Italian Wars with the idea of spoiling the consequences of the Constitutional Revolution which favored the Qur’an.  Then with the outbreak of the First World War, through the political diplomats blowing their evils, material and immaterial, and their sorcery and poison into everyone’s heads through the tongue of the radio, and inculcating their covert plans into the heart of human destiny, they prepared the evils that would savagely destroy a thousand years of the progress of civilization, which corresponds exactly with the meaning of the blowers on knots.41

It is clear from the Risale-i Nur that for Said Nursi, the Aspiritual darkness arising from science and philosophy was not merely an intellectual problem.  It was a burden that affected him personally.  In his ATreatise for the Elderly, he records that the struggle brought him great inner pain and struggle.  He states that Arelying on what they had learnt from the people of misguidance and philosophers, my soul and Satan attacked my reason and my heart.42  He thanks God for the victory over the despair and confusion against which he was struggling and shared his experience of spiritual crisis in the hope that it might help others who had been led astray in their youth Aby matters which though called Western philosophy or the sciences of civilization, are in part misguidance and in part trivia.  Through meditation on the Qur’an, Nursi was able to arrive at an understanding of Divine unity that recognized in all creatures the artwork of a loving Creator.  As he says,

And so, through this most subtle, powerful, profound, and clear proof, my soul, which had been a temporary student of Satan and the spokesman for the people of misguidance and the philosophers, was silenced, and, all praise be to God, came to believe completely.  It said: AYes, what I need is a Creator and Sustainer who possesses the power to know the least thoughts of my heart and my most secret wishes, who will answer the most hidden needs of my spirit and will transform the mighty earth into the Hereafter in order to give me eternal happiness.43

7. The dangers of consumerism

One of the most pernicious aspects of modern civilization is the proliferation of material goods and the consequent urge to convince people that they need such goods to obtain happiness.  This does not happen by accident.  Nursi sees this preoccupation with the material as a direct result of the abandonment of the spiritual side of life.  Having rejected the value of loving obedience to God in daily behavior and given up the hope of everlasting life with God, modern people become obsessed with the acquisition of material goods and comforts in order to give meaning to their lives.  In a letter written near the end of his life after visits to Istanbul, Said Nursi wrote:

Since modern Western civilization acts contrary to the fundamental laws of the revealed religions, its evils have come to outweigh its good aspects, its errors and harmful aspects its benefits.  General tranquility and a happy worldly life, the true aims of civilization, have been destroyed.  Since wastefulness and extravagance have taken the place of frugality and contentment, and laziness and the desire for ease have overcome endeavor and the sense of service, it has made unfortunate mankind both extremely poor and extremely lazy. In explaining the fundamental law of the revealed Qur’an: Eat and drink, but waste not in excess, and Man possesses naught save that which he strives, the Risale-i Nur says: Man’s happiness in this life lies in frugality and endeavor, and it is through them that the rich and poor will be reconciled.44 

Nursi explains that in former times, people only needed a few material things to make them content and they were willing to work hard to obtain those basic needs.  In modern life, however, Athrough wastefulness, misuse, stimulation of the appetites, and such things as custom and addiction, present-day civilization has made inessential needs seem essential, and in place of the four things which someone used to need, modern civilized man is now in need of twenty.45

To Nursi, consumerism is directly linked to the abandonment of religion.  It is at once an impoverishment and a source of depravity and aggression.  If in former times, wars were fought for reasons of religion and justice, today they are fought for possession of oil fields, water rights, and control of markets.  Said Nursi states:

Since modern Western civilization has not truly heeded the revealed religions, it has both impoverished man and increased his needs. It has destroyed the principle of frugality and contentment, and increased wastefulness, greed, and covetousness. It has opened the way to tyranny and what is unlawfulYIt has encouraged depravity and dissipation, and wasted lives on useless things.46