The Reconstruction of Islamic Social Thought in the Modern Period: Nursi's Approach to Religious Discourse in a Changing Society

Abstract

In this article I will analyse the social aspects of Said Nursi's thought in the context of late Ottoman and modern Turkish intellectual history within the boundaries of social philosophy and theology. I aim to discuss the outcome of Nursi's work in formulating a live discourse that corresponds to the needs of modern Muslim society in Turkey and around the world. Nursi's life and thought comprises interesting evidences to comprehend the transition of Muslims in the traumatic period of the two World Wars in the twentieth century and their resistance to the challenges of a new 'weltanschauung' and various philosophical ideas, as well as a new political design that tried to reshape society by pursuing a hard-line modernisation process.