Prof. Dr. Yunus Çengel
University of Nevada, Reno
Reno, NV 89557 USA
yunus.cengel@yahoo.com

Conference on God, Man and Mortality from the Perspective of Said Nursi

School of Government and International Affairs
University of Durham, UK
October 20-21, 2008
ABSTRACT
Sciences are based on observation, and progressed by questioning. The biggest obstacle before the advancement of sciences is preconception, and its source is conjunction. A person who is accustomed to seeing two things always together eventually fosters the idea that those two things are parts of each other or one is the source of the other. It is very difficult to break this conditioning and mindset solidly entrenched over time, and to prevent it’s shaping the mind.
We sense many things like beauty, compassion, and even life only when they manifest themselves on matter, and naturally we think matter to be the source of everything. This prejudgment that we grew up with without much questioning still forms the main platform that sciences are built on. In this paper, the current view that the universe and everything in it are made entirely of matter is challenged, and an alternative view that may deeply affect, and even change, our current understanding of beings is proposed. It is reasoned on the basis of observations that all beings are mixtures of matter and non-matter components, and that the universe is made of several non-matter layers in addition to the familiar layer of matter.
When it comes to perceiving our environment and beings, we rely on our five senses that are all related to matter. Therefore, we cannot see things such as the mind and love that have no material existence, and we cannot touch such things either. As a result, we tend to view material things as real beings, and non-material ones (things that have no material existence) as imaginary beings or as reflections of material interactions. Everything we perceive as matter – from subatomic particles to galaxies, from microbes to human beings – is actually a blend of matter and meaning (non-matter). Everything is like some sort of fabric interwoven of matter and meaning fibers. And the thing of essence is the meaning, not the matter. Matter is just a dress or a cover, which enables us to perceive meanings by our five senses. That is, meaning is the kernel, and matter is the shell. As Nursi puts it, “The physical world is but a lace veil strewn over the irradiating worlds of the Unseen,” and “this material and manifest world is but a lace veil strewn over the inner and spirit worlds.” Meaning is beyond time and space; matter is subject to time and space, and therefore the laws of physics.
There are no such things as sight, willpower, life, consciousness, love, and beauty in the basic building blocks of matter, and something cannot exist in the whole if it is not present in its parts. If it does, them it must be coming from somewhere else. The reality of diamond can be understood only when it is noticed that the origin of its glitter is a light source outside, and not the carbon atoms themselves. The reality of beings, especially human beings, shall be understood only when it is realized that the origins of numerous immaterial glitters such as love and life that shine on matter are the numerous immaterial layers, and not the matter itself. In the words of Nursi, “the true reality of things is the Divine Names.”

INTRODUCTION
Despite the major scientific developments in the twentieth century and the fact that this is the age of information, the nature of man continues to be a puzzle. Understanding the past behavior of human beings and predicting their future acts depends on having a good understanding of the human being and the human society which resemble a big human being. If the behaviors of people and societies differ significantly from those predicted and we continue to be surprised, then we are still a long way from knowing the people and societies. In medicine, treatment becomes useless and cannot provide a cure for ailments when the diagnostics is wrong or incomplete. Likewise, in personal and social life, it is not possible to find effective solutions to personal and societal problems unless the nature of man is known correctly. Therefore, the starting point for finding solutions to the problems of people and societies and to provide lasting peace and happiness must be the understanding of the true nature of man. Otherwise, all the solutions offered and prescriptions written are bound to remain useless, and we will continue to be disappointed.
The past century has witnessed major developments in biological sciences, and biotechnology has been one of the locomotives of global economy. As a result, today we know the human body much better and diagnose and treat its ailments much more effectively. We are not far from days when genetically engineered tissues and organs compatible with the genetic code of the person are grown in the labs. But it is not possible to draw the same rosy picture for the human spirit that manifests itself through behavior. That is, the sciences associated with the human body or the material being of people have followed a fast pace and portray a bright future outlook, but the sciences associated with the spirit or non-material being of people lagged behind. This picture shows clearly that sciences associated with the non-material being of people are largely underdeveloped, inadequate, and even invalid. The first thing that needs to be done is to try to understand the true nature of man correctly by stripping off any profound prejudices and misinformation. And this should be done on the basis of careful observations, which is the source of positive sciences, and utilizing the ideas of sharp minded thinkers like Nursi.
The main problem of modern times is the addiction to matter, and the main mix-up is the presumption that the source of everything is matter. This materialistic idea that forms the basis of the current scientific approach is a belief and an ideology rather than science. This approach, which views the human being basically as a bag of matter and looks for the source of the disposition, action, and feelings of people in the interactions of matter, is far from understanding the human being. Darwinistic view asserts that man is an advanced animal species that emerged by evolution following a chain of random events. It is unfortunate that this view is taken under a protective shield by declaring it to be ‘scientific’ while other views are flatly rejected for not being based on observations and thus not being scientific. The highest point humanity can reach on the premise where man is viewed as an animal is the point of ‘happy animal’. And this corresponds to the situation in which the body is in good health and comfort, its entire needs are met, and all its desires are satisfied to the extent possible. The validity of this ‘prescription for happiness’ for human beings is open to discussion on the basis of observations.
When viewed as physical bodies, there is indeed not much difference between human beings and animals. Compared to animals, human beings are much more intelligent, are interdependent, and they trade goods and services to meet their needs. Therefore, the human being is often described as ‘intelligent animal’, ‘social animal’, and ‘economical animal’. Another noticeable difference between animals and human beings is that humans use tools and gather all necessary materials before starting something, which shows imagination. But the difference between people and animals is not limited by the above. For example, a person is concerned with the past as well as the future, and its range of interest and understanding is rather wide to include all times and places. Physically a person can live only at a certain place and in a certain moment. But mentally, emotionally, and in imagination, that person can travel both in time and space with no limitations, can receive pain or pleasure from both the past and the future, and can effectively live in a wide period of time spiritually. Therefore, unlike an animal, while living bodily a heaven-like life, spiritually he or she can be suffering a hell-like torment with the pains of the past life and the fears of the future. Or even when he is quite happy and comfortable, through empathy, the pain of others, especially close ones, can spoil his current pleasure and cause him to weep. In Nursi’s words, “Man is connected with all living creatures, and in this respect is gladdened by their happiness and saddened by their pain. … A person with conscience who feels sorrow and pity at the weeping of a motherless, hungry child, surely feels pleasure at a mother’s compassion for her child, surely he is pleased and happy.” Animals, on the other hand, do not empathize with their associates in pain, and in general continue to enjoy themselves like nothing has happened.
Materially, a person is just even a point in the world, and the world is a point in the universe. That is, as far as his body is concerned, a person is a mere dot within a dot. But through his meaning or spirit, his non-matter faculties and emotions such the mind, imagination, heart, and talents that encompass everything, he is such a vast being that the enormous earth becomes only a point in his imagination. Both the pain and the pleasure a person receives through his non-matter faculties – depending on their degree of development – are in proportion to their vastness. The magnitude of the difference between a human being and an animal lies not in matter but in non-matter.
As far as physical parts and organs are concerned, there is not much difference among people, and all are basically replicas of each other. Of course there is some difference between the bodily sizes, but the value of a person and the magnitude of the pain and pleasure a person gets in life does not have much to do with the bodily size. The attribute ‘great man’ has no relation to the weight and height of a person. From the point of view of non-physical faculties, however, two people can be worlds apart. For example, while a mother who risks her life for her infant is cheered as a hero of compassion, a person who kills an innocent is booed as a heartless wild beast. While distinguished intellectuals and scholars are given the royal treatment, the common people receive the ordinary treatment. While a person with a high moral character inspires wellness in a community like a medicine, another person filled with greed or revenge can be a poison. In short, the difference between two people can be far greater than the difference between two different species of animals, and this difference is entirely in non-matter qualities rather than matter.
The most striking difference between human beings and animals is in the number of stomachs they have. There is one stomach in animals, but several in human beings. The familiar physical stomach that digests the food we eat when we are hungry is basically the same in both human beings and animals. The foods for this physical stomach are the variety of fruits, vegetables, and dishes that turn the face of the world into an exceptional buffet. All other stomachs in human beings are associated with being a human being, and all are non-matter or meaning. For example, the mind is a stomach, and its food is knowledge. The sense of loving is a stomach, and its food is love. Generosity is also a stomach, and its food is to give or to receive. All stomachs – physical or non-physical – shrink when they are subjected to deprivation. The hunger of all stomachs is pain, and their fulfillment a pleasure.
There is an upper limit for the size of the physical organs that are nourished via the familiar stomach. But for the non-physical organs or faculties, there is no such limit. Sometimes a single emotion like greed or animosity develops so much and establishes such deep roots that it dominates the person. All physical parts of the body are good, and serve a useful purpose. But although goodness is the rule for non-physical organs or faculties, the seeds of both good and bad traits are sawn into the nature of human beings, and only those attributes that are watered and fed with their proper food develop and grow. Others remain dormant like a dry seed. The human body resembles the soil of a garden, and its value depends more on the value of the plants that grow on it rather than the soil itself.

MATTER-BASED AND ATRIBUTE-BASED VIEWS
The materialistic world view maintains that all things, including humans, are meaningless beings that consist of material bodies and are formed following a series of random events starting with the big bang. Nursi, on the other hand, expresses that matter is just a veil spread over existences of meanings, and states that the real existence is the non-matter or meaning. It is not possible to understand the essence of the world of existence by viewing the universe as a pile of ink-tainted paper rather than a book. According to Nursi, true enlightenment is to go beyond the paper and the ink and to understand the inscriptions.
Nursi expressed a striking difference between the view points of materialist philosophy and Qur’anic philosophy in 12th Word by likening the wondrous universe to a Qur’an written with jewelry. In this Risale Nursi talks about the creatures being verses of creation written with the pen of power (matter-energy) on the pages of universe, and states that every being is a meaningful letter on those pages. Also, he stresses the importance of looking at beings on the account of their artist with the perspective of mana-yi harfî (divinely meaningful outlook) and not mana-yı ismî (nominal outlook). According to Nursi, viewing beings from the perspective of mana-yı ismî or on their own account is ignorance rather than enlightenment, and is simply dealing with nonsense.
One of the most fundamental suppositions in sciences is the notion that the origin of everything is matter – an idea that dates back to Stoic times, and is reigned as an unquestionable scientific fact in modern times. Yet, it is remarkable that this notion is never tested, and therefore it is not even scientific. The big bang theory also helped propel this notion of ‘all-material’ universe.
A basic requirement for scientific facts is to be consistent with observed phenomena and the existing scientific evidence, and to pass certain tests. Yet the notion that everything is made of matter and matter alone fails even the simplest test: two identical roses, one of them is smashed to a mud while the other is not, are materially equivalent. But they are very different, all differences like beauty, art, and order being nonmaterial or meaning.
We sense many things – including force, love, and even life – only when they manifest on matter, and naturally we think matter to be the source of everything. This prejudgment that we grew up with without much questioning still forms the main platform that sciences are built on. Nursi has not shown any interest in the one-dimensional view that the universe and everything in it are made entirely of matter (or energy), and criticized those who have. To those who raised the objection “Who do you think you are to challenge these famous philosophers? You are like a mere fly and yet you meddle in the flight of eagles!” Nursi has responded by saying “the matter in which they got drowned did not even wet my toes.” According to Nursi, matter-energy is a manifestation of the Divine name “All-Powerful” (‘Kadir’). All non-matter attributes are reflections of other Divine names. For example, life is a manifestation of the Divine name ‘Ever-Living’ (‘Hay’), the character is a manifestation of ‘Divine Individuality’ (‘Ferd’), and utility and purposefulness is a manifestation of ‘All-Wise’ (‘Hakim’).
This way, Nursi relates all beings to Divine Names (‘esma-i ilahiye’) and thus to God: “The reality of the universe and of all beings is based on the Divine Names. The reality of every being is based on one Name or on many. All sciences and arts are also based on and rely upon a Name. The true science of philosophy is based on the Name of All-Wise, true medicine on the Name of Healer, and geometry on the Name of Determiner, and so on. And in the same way that all the sciences are based on and come to an end in a Name, the realities of all arts and sciences, and of all human attainments, are based on the Divine Names. Indeed, one group of the most learned of the saints stated that the Divine Names constitute the true reality of things, while the essences of things are only shadows of that reality. They said too that even only apparently as many as twenty manifestations of the impresses of the Divine Names may be seen on a single living creature.”
Nursi states that all beings are mirrors that reflect the Divine Names of God, and that the mirror that reflects the Names in the brightest and most comprehensive way is the human being. He also invites man to read himself: “Man acts as a mirror to the Divine Names, the imprint of which are upon him. There are more than seventy Names the impresses of which are apparent in man’s comprehensive nature. These have been described to a degree at the start of the Third Stopping- Place of the Thirty-Second Word. For example, through his creation, man shows the Names of Maker and Creator; through his being ‘Most Excellent of Patterns,’ the Names of Most Merciful and All-Compassionate, and through the fine way he is nurtured and raised, the Names of All-Generous and Granter of Favors, and so on; he shows the differing impresses of different Names through all his members and faculties, all his organs and limbs, all his subtle senses and faculties, all his feelings and emotions. That is to say, just as among the Names there is a Greatest Name, so among the impresses of those Names there is a greatest impress, and that is man. O you who considers himself to be a true man! Read yourself! Otherwise it is possible you will be a man who is either animal-like or inanimate!” This expression also explains the often misinterpreted hadith “God has created man in the image of the ‘Most Merciful’” and its Christian counterpart “Man is created in the image of God.”
A NEW LOOK AT BEINGS
To shed some light on non-matter things or meanings, we can conduct some simple mental experiments. Consider, for example, a 100-gram book consisting of 99 grams of paper and 1gram of ink, and compare it to 1 gram of ink randomly spilled over 99 grams of paper. In terms of matter, there is no difference between a 100-gram book and 100-grams of ink-stained papers. If we send those two to a materials analysis lab for tests, both will come back with identical reports for content. Considering that the 100-gram book and 100-gram of inked paper are identical as far as materials is concerned, all differences between those two are related to the meaning only and thus they are non-material. Therefore, what we call “meaning” for a book is everything other than the paper and ink. A book, it appears, is a material being that consists of ink and paper, is visible to the eye, and touchable by the hand. But in reality, what makes the book a book are the meanings in it, and the material being of a book is nothing compared to its meaning, which is the non-material being. As a matter of fact, the e-books whose popularity have increased in recent years and can be recorded on a little space on a CD or a flashcard have neither ink nor paper. It appears like words can be written in any color and reorganized by electric energy converted to light on the face of a screen. It can even be said that what we call a book is a screen, a monitor, a sheath, or a binocular that makes it possible for the meaning to appear on pages.
Another example that will be helpful in understanding the relation between matter and meaning is the rose. Let’s take two roses that are completely identical, and smash one of them until it turns to sludge. Then let’s ask if there is any difference between those two. Most likely, such a question will be considered absurd, and it will be said that a rose cannot be compared to a pile of sludge. However, if the rose and its sludge twin are sent to a chemistry lab for analysis, the lab report will state that materially both are identical. Thus, materially, there is no difference between a rose and the sludge of its smashed twin. But those two are obviously different, and the difference between them is entirely meaning since it is not matter. (I don’t suppose any one will even think of giving a smashed rose instead of an actual rose to a loved one thinking that materially they are the same.) This means, every attribute and quality that the sludge does not have is related to meaning, and the value of rose’s matter is virtually nothing compared to the value of its meaning. In other words, what makes the rose a rose is not its matter, but rather, the meaning that transcends on that matter. Rose is a sort of meaning bearer, and rose is the first thing that comes to mind when one wishes to send pleasant meanings. The person who receives the rose actually receives the pleasant meanings sent, not its matter, and absorbs meanings and rejoices via the senses. Unless, of course, it is received by one who sees nothing other than matter, and is unaware of meaning, like a donkey or a cow. The striking difference between human beings and animals is the hundreds of such feelings and the associated non-material stomachs. In other words, animals have only one stomach whereas humans have hundreds of them, and all but one are associated with meanings. Therefore, living to eat is, in essence, resigning from humanity.
The thing that makes a rose beautiful is obviously not the beauty in its atoms since the nitrogen or hydrogen atom in a rose is completely identical to the one in a smashed rose – just like carbon atoms in graphite and diamond being identical. Since what is not in its parts cannot be in the whole (the conservation law), the beauty of a rose must be emanating from outside rather than its material – just like a diamonds’ fascinating glitter originating from a source of light outside. The special trait of roses and other beautiful things is their ability to receive and reflect this beauty – just like the special trait of diamond being its ability to receive and scatter light in a glamorous way. And this necessitates the existence of widespread beauty and thus a layer of beauty, which has nothing to do with matter (and thus time) in the universe. Even the Ancient Romans and Greeks must have felt this meaning, so they have sanctified this layer as Venus or Aphrodite, “the goddess of love and beauty”.
As the final example, let’s consider a housefly. Like all other living things, the basic building blocks of a fly consist mainly of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon atoms, which are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons like all other elements. In other words all beings, dead or alive, consist of atoms (or electrons, protons and neutrons), and the cement holding these basic building blocks together is the force. Now let’s put a dead fly with its live twin side by side, and compare them. Materially, these two flies are identical since no mass is gained or lost by death. Further, if the live fly stands still, it is rather difficult to distinguish it from the dead one. Thus we can say that every difference between the dead and live beings – life, sight, hearing, order, beauty, consciousness, love, etc. – is immaterial and thus meaning.

LIFE
There is no such component as life in the atoms or molecules (or the particles or waves they are made of) that all living organisms are made of. Considering that what is not in the parts cannot be in the whole, life has to be non-matter and thus meaning, and thus it is not subject to the limitation of time and space. Then, there must exist a vast “life” layer in the universe emanating the light of life, and everything that is capable of receiving this light of life – whether it has a material body or not – is alive.
Observations show that the common feature of all living things is to contain water in their bodies. Therefore, the search for extraterrestrial life is conducted by seeking water. But water is not the source of life, and cannot be. This is because there is no such thing as life in a water molecule that consists of two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms, and the claim that water is the source of something that it does not have is absurd, just like the false claims that the diamond is the source of the light it scatters or the television set is the source of images on its screen.

FREE WILL
In the material universe that started with the Big Bang, everything is subject to physical laws, and consequently the actions of all beings – whether alive or not – is predetermined. According to this philosophical view called ‘Determinism,’ there cannot be any such thing as ‘free will’ as this would be a violation of the laws of physics. Besides, there is no such component called ‘free will’ in the building blocks of matter. Yet, the existence of ‘free will’ is a scientific fact since its presence can be observed, demonstrated, and tested. In the inanimate world, the physical laws fully govern, and the reaction of an inanimate being in response to a specific action can be predicted with precision beforehand. But this is not the case for animate beings that possess free will. Even this observation alone is sufficient to shatter the notion of all-mater universe. Also, if it weren’t for the non-matter dimension of free will, the future would have been known with certainty, and people would have been like robots with no consciousness. And they would not be responsible for their acts – like a malfunctioning robot not being held responsible for the damages that it may ha ve caused.
Being bogged down in matter has caused difficulties even for some prominent thinkers. Albert Einstein, for example, became a devoted determinist because of his firm belief in physics, and argued that even human beings cannot have free will: “A person’s actions were just as determined as those of a billiard ball, planet, or star. … Human actions are determined, beyond their control, by physical and psychological laws. … Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no contro1. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” When the matter is viewed from the ‘Attributes’ point of view, free will will appear as the reflection of the Divine name ‘Mürid’ (‘The One Who Wills]) on living beings that possess consciousness.

PHYSICAL LAWS
Laws and rules are the foundations of order and peace in the entire world, and this is also the case in the universe. For example, if just the law of gravity is relinquished, everything will start flying around, and there will be a complete chaos. The laws in a country reflect the general will of the people that live in that county, and the natural laws in the universe reflect a universal will that rules over the universe. The police force in a county enforces the law, and makes sure that people obide by the laws. In the universe, this is done by natural laws and principles – like the gravitational force ensuring that everything obeys the law of gravity.
Laws are not of matter, and thus they are not subject to limitations of time and space. As such, they rule everywhere, but they are not anywhere. As Einstein put it, “a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe.” The total obedience of every particle of matter to laws of nature and the manifestation of laws by their appearance in matter perpetuated the presumption that the origin of laws, like the origin of force, is matter. In the basic building blocks of matter (particles or waves), there is no such thing as “law” as a component – just like there is no material component of laws in the bodies of law-obeying people. We can even say that the law of gravity will continue to exist even if all matter in the universe disappears, and Fourier’s law of heat conduction will still apply even if there is no conduction of heat (as in the case of the whole universe being at the same temperature). This is like the income tax law remaining applicable over an entire country even if there is no income generated in a particular year since the law is not part of the income or the people that generate it.
In his book A Different Universe, 1998 Physics Nobel prize recipient Robert Laughlin argues that most physical laws do not have their origins in the microscopic word; rather, they simply emerge or appear in macroscopic world out of nowhere: “The most fundamental laws of physics – such as Newton’s laws of motion or quantum mechanics – are in fact emergent. They are properties of large assemblages of matter, and when their exactness is examined too closely, it vanishes into nothing.” In other words, physical laws do not originate from the matter that they govern; they simply emerge out of nowhere – that is, somewhere other than the material universe. After examining some primitive organizational phenomena such as weather, he asserts “We are able to prove in these simple cases that the organization can acquire meaning and life of its own and begin to transcend the parts from which it is made. What physical science thus has to tell us is that the whole being more than the sum of its parts is not merely a concept but a physical phenomenon. Nature is regulated not only by a microscopic rule base but by powerful and general principles of organization.” “Physical law cannot generally be anticipated by pure thought, but must be discovered experimentally.” These are powerful statements that assert, on the basis of observations, that the whole is more than the sum of its parts made of matter-energy originating from the Big Bang universe. Then the ‘extras’ in the whole must be non-matter or meaning, and must be coming from ‘non-matter universes’ that Nursi labels as ‘Divine Attributes’.

CHARACTER AND DIVINE INDIVIDUALITY
Atoms, which are the basic building blocks of elements, are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and there are over 100 elements in nature – some naturally occurring and some artificially made in labs by fusion. The characteristic difference between these elements is the number of protons in their nucleus. For example, a hydrogen atom contains 1 proton, carbon 6, iron 26, and gold 79. But all protons are the same – just like the grains of rise in a bag. If, when tightly wrapped, 6 grains of rice become a bean instead of a 6-grain rise stack, 26 grains become a corn, and 79 grains become a hazelnut, there is something curious going on. Or, if 6 white men become a single giant black man when tightly wrapped, and he then turns back to 6 white men when the rope is removed… Even more peculiar, if 2 engineers turn into a medical doctor when tightly wrapped, and 3 engineers turn into a lawyer… We will probably give up.
The characters of carbon, iron, and gold are very different from each other, and it is clear that this character does not originate from the protons themselves. This is because the protons possess neither the character of carbon, nor iron or gold. It also appears that it is quite possible to convert carbon or iron into gold – all we need to do is to split the carbon or iron atoms as we split uranium atoms in nuclear power plants, and recombine the released protons into groups of 79.
Similarly, if we mix two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen, this becomes a gas mixture with the properties of both components. But when the hydrogen and oxygen atoms combine with a chemical bond, we obtain “water” with completely different properties. Considering that the force that provides the chemical bond does not possess the properties of water or any other compound, where does the character of compounds such as water come from? It seems that there is common non-matter layer of individualism that is the source of character, and the Name “Divine Individuality” shines on all beings like the sun.

LOVE AND COMPASSION
There is probably no doubt about the presence of love and different kinds and degrees of love in the universe. Nursi even sees love as the core of creation: “Love is the cause of the universe’s existence. And it is the bond of the universe.” The noblest and the purest of all loves is compassion, which is above all material and non-material interests. The presence of common motherly compassion in the universe is confirmed by observations, and the phrase “mother nature” is an expression of it. Nursi attracts attention to this compassion that exists even in wild animals and turns the attentions to the source of these common glitters of compassion: “[Mercy] makes the hen-birds search out the food and bring it their wingless, frail chicks in the nests at the tops of trees. He subjugates the hungry lions to her cubs, so she does not eat the meat she finds but gives it to them.”
The food for the emotion of compassion is to give and receive compassion; that is, to love and to be loved without any preconditions and without expecting anything in return. Therefore, there is no place for compassion in the materialistic philosophy that is based on material interests and pleasures. At the end, compassion, which is noblest feeling, is confused with the lowly physical attraction or lust, and this mix up is presented as science. Compassion shines the brightest in mothers, and turns them into statues of embodied compassion. Yet there is no such component as ‘compassion’ in the cells, the basic building blocks of living things, and thus compassion must be non-matter or meaning. If something is not originating from the parts, it must be coming from somewhere else. Therefore, there must exist a vast non-material layer of ‘compassion’ in the universe that is beyond time and space, and the most compassionate beings are those who, like a diamond, receive and scatter the rays of compassion emanating from that layer most intensely. According to Nursi, this apparent world of compassion is a reflection of the Divine Name ‘Most Compassionate’: “The existence and reality of a boundless mercy is as clearly apparent in the universe as the light of the sun. As certainly as light testifies to the sun, so this extensive mercy testifies to a Most Merciful and Compassionate One behind the veil of the Unseen.” He also asserts that “The compassion of all mothers is but a flash of the manifestation of Divine Mercy.”

GRATIS GIVING
One of the traits best loved in people is generosity and courtesy. Everyone likes to receive gifts and bounties, and gets a pleasure proportionately. The pleasure has a momentary material dimension, which is also the case for animals, and a timeless non-material dimension that is specific to human beings. For example, the greatest pleasure in a box of chocolate given as a gift is not the temporary pleasure that occurs in the taste buds while eating the chocolate, but rather, the permanent pleasure that occurs in the heart while receiving the gift which carries with it meanings like love, thought, and appreciation, and renews itself as it is remembered and as the memory is stirred with thought. Otherwise, rushing to open the box and attacking the chocolates inside is animalism. A bouquet of roses is probably nothing more than an instant of eating pleasure for a cow. But the same bouquet of roses is an endless pleasure for a human being because of the meanings it carries – although it offers no material pleasure to taste buds. Not being aware of this major dimension of humanity and spending a life time by chasing after temporary physical pleasures as animals do is deprivation and a waste of human traits.
When viewed from a materialistic angle, giving without receiving anything in return is against the interest of the giver, and thus it is a foolish act. And this is totally against the materialist philosophy which views the purpose of life as ‘self interest’ and the basis of relations as ‘mutual interest’. On the surface it looks like the one who gives is at a loss and the one who receives is at a gain. But beneath the surface there is a spiritual pleasure called ‘the pleasure of giving’ that generous people receive as they give. Generosity is one of the noblest feelings in people. The food of this feeling is to give without expecting anything in return. This non-matter stomach nourishes and grows by giving, and it becomes an endless source of pleasure for the person. The pleasure that the giver gets out of this human trait is probably far greater than the sum of the pleasures of the receivers. For people with a well-developed sense of pleasing others or a large stomach of humanity, giving and making others happy, even if it is with a mere pleasant word or a smile, is a source of permanent pleasure and happiness.

KNOWLEDGE
Nursi attracts attention to the ‘knowledge body’ (vücud-u ilmî) of beings, which can be viewed as the luminous matrices of beings interwoven with rays of knowledge, in addition to their material bodies. Observations confirm that from a particle to a galaxy, everything has a non-matter spirit-like robust ‘knowledge body’, and everything appears to be knitted with knowledge (like a biological cell and a cellular phone). A scientific study is merely an attempt to put together the ‘knowledge bodies’ of beings correctly in their entirety. This is done by observing the glimpses of knowledge emanating from beings, and by seeing the authentic form of the ray of knowledge with the mental eye, and describing it for others to see. The mass of a cell, for example, is about one billionth of a gram. But the knowledge that exists in a cell has already filled volumes of books. Therefore, the ‘material body’ of cell is nothing compared to its ‘knowledge body.’ The cell is like the materialized form of knowledge.
The fact that everything is made with knowledge shows that there is a common ‘ray of knowledge’ that penetrates into everything – just like the glitters of light from a diamond showing the presence of a source of light around. But there is no such component as “knowledge” in the basic building blocks of beings. Therefore, knowledge has to be non-matter and thus meaning since there is no doubt about the existence of knowledge and what is not in the parts cannot be in the whole. If something is not originating from the parts, it must be coming from somewhere else. Therefore, there must exist a vast non-material layer of “knowledge” in the universe emanating the light of knowledge. Unlike the ordinary light, this ray of knowledge can be sensed with the non-matter mental eye rather than the ordinary bodily eye. Nursi relates this luminous universe to the Divine Name ‘All-knowing’: “All the evidences for knowledge are evidences also for the existence of the All-Knowing One. Since it is impossible and precluded that there should be an attribute without the one it qualifies, all the proofs of knowledge form a powerful and completely certain supreme proof of the Pre-Eternal All-Knowing One’s necessary existence.”

THE FIVE SENSES AND MORE
In addition to the five senses like sight, touch, and smell that are related to matter, people have countless senses such as justice, motivation, and even the sixth sense that are not related to matter directly. When we perceive the environment and beings, we usually rely on the five primary sensory organs like the eye and the ear, and the brain which is the center all five sensory organs are connected to. As a result of limiting the world of existence to matter, we tend to view the five senses as the making of matter, and other senses as the manifestations of interactions of matter. As a result, we call the brain the ‘miracle organ’, and admit that we understand little about the operation of this amazing organ. Actually, what we don’t understand is the truths of beings, and not the brain. The mystery of the brain is not due to its matter, but rather, its use as a black box in which we hide all our inconsistencies and ignorance.
Now let us consider the process of seeing. Based on the simple observation that we see when our eyes are open and don’t see when they are closed, we quickly draw the conclusion that ‘it is the eye that sees’. But this is no different than for a person that depends on glasses for sight and sees only with glasses to say that ‘it is the glasses that see’. (Besides, we can see in our dreams quite clearly wiht our eyes closed). Those who take a more wholistic approach also consider the nerves that transmit the signal to the vision center in the brain, and claim that seeing occurs in a wondrous way at the vision center in the brain. That is, seeing just happens out of nowhere. Here the brain is used as a black curtain to cover up our ignorance. In other words, the brain is turned into a black hole that gobbles up information and does not allow even information to escape. But what is called the ‘vision center’ in the brain is nothing more than the end-point of the sight nerves coming from the eyes. The basic building blocks of the entire brain, including the vision center, are simply the elements, or their components electrons, protons, and neutrons. That is, whatever is in a wood is also what is in the brain. And the electric signal that occurs in the brain as a result of the flow of the charged particles is no different than the electric current in the processer of a computer.
There is no such component as ‘eyesight’ in the atoms or molecules of the eyes and the brain, and what is not in the parts cannot be in the whole. If it is, then it must be coming from somewhere else. Eye and brain consist of atoms like carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The seeing ability of the eye and the brain is no more than that of a slice of bread which is made off basically the same atoms. The cells that make up the eye-nerve-brain trio does not contain a material component called ‘eyesight’, and thus vision – whose existence is undeniable – must be non-matter and thus meaning. Then, there must exist a vast “vision” layer in the universe, which is beyond time and space, emanating the light of vision, and like a diamond, everything capable of receiving this light of vision is a seeing being. According to Nursi, the immaterial vision world is a manifestation of the Divine name ‘All-Seer’ or ‘Basîr’.
The loss of eyesight when a fault develops in the eye or the vision center of the brain does not show that these organs are the source of vision – just like the glasses not being the source of vision for wearers of glasses. That is, the eye-nerve-brain combination for eyesight is what glasses are for the eye. It seems like what is called the ‘vision center’ is simply the manifestation point of the immaterial eyesight attribute in the brain. In other words, the vision center in the brain is the welding spot of the body and the sense of seeing of the spirit, and the cross over from matter to non-matter.
Likewise, all perfumes and nice-smelling flowers are made of atoms like hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, and there is no ‘smell’ component in any of these atoms. The hydrogen atom in water is the same as that in a flower, and all atoms are made of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Then we should ask, ‘where in the perfume or flower is the smell?’ Interestingly, even the bad-smelling things are made of the same atoms. It seems like smell manifests itself on matter, is transmitted with matter, but it is not matter. Therefore, smell must be non-matter or meaning, and each molecule has a certain ability to receive smell and to reflect it. But the source of smell is not the arrangement of the atom – just like the source of the glitter of a diamond being the light coming from outside and not the arrangement of carbon atoms in a crystalline form. The cause of deception here is what Nursi calls conjunction (‘iktiran’), which is the emergence of two things together and thinking that one cannot be without the other. That is, when one of them goes so does the other, and thus a person is conditioned to think that one is the source of the other.
Similar things can also be said about taste. For example, all fruits from oranges to apples are made of the same atoms. But the taste has nothing to do with the atoms in the fruits. That is, oxygen or hydrogen does not have a particular taste of their own, and water, which is a compound of these two elements do not have an intermediate taste that will resemble us this mixture. Therefore, no one can predict the taste of an organic molecule by looking at the atoms in its structure. It appears that taste is also a meaning that reflects differently on different arrangement of atoms – yet independent of the atoms themselves – and the taste of a substance can only be known by experimenting. A chemist who comes across salt for the first time in his life can predict many chemical properties of the salt by examining its atomic structure. But he cannot say anything about its taste by simply examining the sodium and chlorine atoms that make up the salt.
DIAMOND: ITS MATTER AND GLITTER
What the word “diamond” brings into one’s mind is not the material of it, but its lively colorful, enchanting glitter that flatters the eyes and the hearts. In fact, the basic structural element of diamond is carbon, which is known by its matte black color, absorbing almost the entire light incident on it (and thus the black color). The reason behind diamond’s charm is not the value or the amount of its dense material, but its ability to take in a translucent world (the world of light) outside and to scatter its rays. Thus, the most precious diamond is not the largest and the heaviest one, but rather the one with highest clarity, purity, and perfection and thus the one with the best light scattering ability. That is, it is the diamond that exhibits the glitter of light best while remaining virtually invisible to the point that one who looks at the diamond sees only the array of fascinating beauty displayed by light and not notice its raw material carbon.
Everyone knows that the source of a diamond’s fascinating glitter is not its material, but the light that comes from an external source. That is, those captivating glitters are not emanating from the carbon atoms, the building blocks of diamonds, but from an external source like the sun or a lamp. This can easily be proved by taking the diamond into a dark room. It will be observed that all the glitter will disappear and even the diamond itself can no longer be seen. It appears that what makes the diamond a diamond and gives the diamond its beauty, charm, and fascination is the light incident on it. A diamond without the light is like a dead corpse without the soul.
Attempting to explain that the source of light that seems to be coming off the diamond is something external may be stating the obvious and may even look ridiculous since no one would claim otherwise. However, this simple observation is of great importance since it may serve as a ladder to climb to important phenomenon that is hard to reach. To begin with, let’s ask the following question: If there existed no darkness in the universe, and light sources such as the sun weren’t visible – that is, there existed abundant light everywhere all the time – how would we explain the light constantly coming off the diamond which would shine continually? Would we still easily say that the light comes from an external source that we cannot see, or would we claim that the source of those charming glitters is the diamond itself? Considering how shortsighted people are in general and how they take things at face value, the answer is not going to be that easy this time. In this case, since we wouldn’t be aware of an all-encompassing spread-out light layer, we would have claimed that those glittering lights come from the diamond itself without a second thought, even if we do not understand how. And in so doing, we would have fallen into a deep illusion and constantly struggle with dilemmas and deadlocks. For example, we would see that a single carbon atom (or a group of carbon atoms arranged as graphite) does not glitter, and would seek answer to the fundamental question “how can a feature that does not exist in its basic structural elements, exist in its whole?”
While some of researchers examine the carbon atom in its finest detail and try to understand where in the atom the light originates, others who realize that the light-emitting diamond and non-emitting graphite differ not in the atoms but in their arrangement, would search for the secret of light in the bonds between the atoms rather than within the atoms themselves. And as evidence they would point the variation of emitted light with the changes in the shape and cut of the diamond. At the end, many contradicting and confusing theories would be proposed, and while some theories are rejected, others would be accepted at least on temporary basis for the lack of better ones. And these fundamentally wrong researches would be introduced as exact sciences, and those involved in these research projects as scientists. Any suggestions on searching the origin of light outside the diamond would be judged as fictive or an unscientific approach by these researchers whose minds are blocked by their eyesight, and wouldn’t be given any consideration. This prejudiced approach would build a wall on the path of sciences rather than opening a pathway, and would block its progress. When we look at the history of science, we see that the greatest breakthroughs in the world of science have resulted when unorthodox approaches that counteract the established ones are taken – like Einstein’s stripping himself off the hard rules of classical mechanics a century ago and proposing the theory of relativity.
In the light of the discussions above (hmmm, is some kind of light coming off discussions, too?), we may express the diamond as follows: Diamond = Carbon + Light. That is, what makes the diamond a diamond is light; more correctly, its ability to take in and scatter out light. It is interesting that the diamond’s vicinity is also filled with light, but we don’t even notice that all-encompassing but invisible being. It is present everywhere is space, but we can see light only via things such like diamonds that receive and scatter it. Hence, it could be said that a substance made of carbon is diamond if it reflects light, and graphite otherwise. The most magnificent diamond is the one that reflects the light in the most fascinating way in accordance with the laws of optics. Therefore, in cutting and processing diamonds, the main factor taken into consideration is the light and the ability to reflect light. The first requirement for becoming a diamond craftsman is also to know light and its characteristics well.
It appears that the reality of diamond and the secret behind its captivating glitter can only be understood when the presence of an all-encompassing world of light is noticed, and the diamond is viewed as a compatible composition of the worlds of carbon and light. This simple observation would play a key role in trying to understand the true nature of beings, and deeply affect our perception of the environment and our understanding of creation. The approach to separate beings into their fundamental layers will provide a breakthrough in scientific approach, and it will form the seed of human progress and the establishment of a true civilization on earth.

BODY AND THE SPIRIT

The materialistic philosophy views the human being, like all other beings, as a collection of matter, and denies the existence of anything other than the nearly 100 trillion cells that comprise the human body. That is, as the basic building blocks, the human being is whatever a pile of soil is. Human being, like all other beings, consists of matter (or energy) only, and is subject to physical laws. This view also forms the foundation of the determinist philosophy. Upon decomposition of these cells after death and becoming part of the soil, a person ceases to exist.

Every difference between a live person and a dead one – life, seeing, hearing, conscienceness, knowledge, free will, love, pain, pleasure, imagination, dreaming, individuality, greed, generosity, art appreciation, sense of justice, and the desire for immortality – is non-matter. The collection of all these non-matter attributes that are beyond time and space is called meaning or the spirit. The materialistic philosophy views these meanings as the outcomes of the manifestations of material interactions (whatever that means). Nursi, on the other hand, views meaning or the spirit as the kernel and the essence of being, and matter as the shell or clothing. Death is simply the departure of this essence of human being from the body shell: “In the course of life, the spirit gradually changes its body-clothes, and at the time of death, it is suddenly undressed. It has been established through certain conjecture, indeed, through observation, that the body subsists though the spirit.”

Those who view existence to consist of matter only and thus deny the existence of the spirit are also aware of the existence of a meaning that transcends the body and its non-matter attributes. But they take the easy way out and give all attributes of the spirit – like to express preference and to give orders – to the brain. Consequently, they are obliged to attach to the brain, which is no different materially than a piece of meat, a hard-to-comprehend extraordinary status approaching divineness.

The brain is simply the control center of the human body – just like the pilot cabin is the command center of the huge body of an airplane. All parts of an airplane are connected through wires to the pilot cabin, like the network of nerves in the human body being connected to the brain, and they receive all the commands from there. But the thing that is in full command of the airplane and makes the necessary decisions is the pilot that is not of the same kind as the cabin, and have attributes like consciousness, sight, hearing, and free will that do not exist in the material of the airplane. When pilots go on strike, all airplanes are still fully equipped with everything including the command center, but they remain grounded. Just like it is impossible to understand the true nature of a flying airplane by insisting on denying the existence of a pilot (or remote operatore if remote controlled) and attributing all wondrous acts to the command center in the pilot cabin, so too it is impossible to understand the true nature of human beings by insisting on denying the existence of a spirit and attributing all beyond-matter wondrous trait like life, conscienceness, imagination, sight, and free will to the material of the brain sealed in a dark thick shell.

When viewed as something that consists of matter, the highest level that a human being can aspire to become is a highly advanced robot. A robot that is a technological wonder can walk, perform certain chores very well, take orders, and see its vicinity mechanically. It can even laugh loudly with a mechanical sound. But it cannot feel anything. Even if it is loaded with a library-full of knowledge, it cannot know anything, and it cannot be aware of what it is doing. Because even if it has a state-of-the-art processor, it cannot have conscience. It cannot suddenly get hit with ideas. It cannot love or get angry at other robots, and it cannot make plans to destroy the robots it does not like. This robot cannot enjoy the beauty of a flower, and cannot desire to see new places. It can play the best music and even do the job of an orchestra, but it can never know the joy of listening to a beautiful sound. It cannot show compassion by embracing a smaller robot. It cannot get a taste of the energy or the fuel it is consuming. It cannot feel pity for another robot and attempt to help it of its own. It cannot comprehend anything happening around itself, it cannot rejoice at good news and be sad at bad news. It cannot know what depression is. It cannot worry about getting old someday and being taken to a robot cemetery to be discarded. It cannot know what longing for immortality is. It cannot think about the past and be concerned about the future. It cannot day dream or dream at night. It cannot laugh at funny things. It can be loaded with a humge amount of information in a few minutes and can learn a foreign language in an instant, but it cannot enjoy learning new things, it cannot get amused, and it cannot critique. It cannot generate new knowledge and it cannot take the initiative to try new things for which it is not programmed for. It can communicate with another robot, but it cannot carry a casual conversation which is an enjoyable exchange of warm feelings – even if it has the most advanced electronic processor. That is, it cannot have any features that make humans what they are. This is because none of these traits originates from matter. All the differences between a human being and a robot which is equipped with all the wondrous features of the human body are non-matter or meaning. And the entirety of all these meanings that transcend through the body just like the penetration of light into the diamond is the spirit. 1998 Physics Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin expresses the meaning that transcents into the body as follows: “If a simple physical phenomenon can become effectively independent of the more fundamental laws from which it descends, so can we. I am carbon, but I need not have been. I have a meaning transcending the atoms from which I am made.”

Body subsists through the spirit, and it is the spirit that gives the body a value. The spirit is non-matter and thus beyond space and time, and as such it is not subject to any of the restrictions that matter is subject to, like the physical laws. The starting point for the understanding of the true nature of man will be the stripping off the matter we are buried in, and turn our attention beyond matter.

CLOSING

The source of positive sciences is observation. In the 5th century B.C., it had been stated that everything is made up of air, earth, water, and fire by Empedocles as a result of simple observations, and this theory dominated the sciences for many centuries. However, since 17th century, re-questioning of the universe and the discovery of the elements have caused a serious leap in scientific advancement, and many new branches of sciences have emerged. Today, we know that everything is made up of 100 or so elements, and every matter can be expressed as a combination of those elements. This initiative has also resulted in the discovery of many chemical compounds and development of modern chemistry.

The idée fix of the modern scientific community is the deeply rooted preconceived notion that the source of everything is matter (or its equivalent energy). And this causes barriers and deadlocks in sciences on the path of progress. The scientific community should recognize and openly declare that there are no such things as force, willpower, life, consciousness, sight, love, beauty, etc. in the basic building blocks of matter, regardless of whether they are particles or waves, and something cannot exist in the whole if it is not present in its parts. It is about time that the current single-layered view of the universe made of matter or energy be seriously questioned (and even abandoned), and a multi-layered view of the universe – that all beings consisting of numerous independent immaterial layers of force, willpower, life, consciousness, sight, love, beauty, etc. as well as matter or energy, be seriously considered. The proposed view is fully consistent with observations, which is the primary source of sciences. The philosophical discussions on the sources of these layers are no different than the discussions on the source of matter and energy before Big Bang. In old Greek philosophy, the sources of these layers were attributed to Gods like Venus, Eros, and Themes. For positive scientists, the approach can be like “eat the grape and don’t worry about the vineyard.” To Nursi, the sources of all non-matter features can be the Divine Names or attributes of God. Therefore, for the followers of Abrahamic tradition, to understand beings is to understand the Divine Names and thus to understand God.

Newton’s questioning of the fall of an apple opened a new age in physics. The impact of the answers of the questions raised here will probably not be any less. It is hoped that articulate researchers that manage to strip themselves off prejudices and preconceived ideas brought about for hundreds of years will observe and show that the universe is not just one- or two-, but multi-layered. And only one of those layers is associated with matter that we are confined into.

The reality of diamond can be understood only when it is noticed that the origin of its glitter is a light source outside and not the carbon atoms themselves or the bonds connecting them. The reality of television can be understood only when it is noticed that the origin of various channels of video and audio is the dozens of broadcasts surrounding the TV set, and not the TV set itself; that is, when it is realized that the television is only the receiver of the broadcasts, not the source of them. Likewise, the reality of beings, especaily the human beings, shall be understood only when it is realized that the origins of numerous immaterial glitters such as life, consciousness, art, and beauty that shine on matter are the numerous immaterial layers or parallel universes, and not the material universe itself that we know of. That will be the beginning of true enlightenment for humanity.

Dr. Colin Turner

I have also heard the Risale-i Nur described as revolutionary, and with this I agree. But I am not talking about revolution in the political sense of the word. There is no mention of this in the Risale-i Nur, although I am sure that had Bediuzzaman advocated the violent overthrow of all secular governments, the Risale-i Nur would be required reading in every Western university, and Bediuzzaman would be a household name in the West.

As someone born and raised in Britain, I am often asked what we as Muslims have to offer to the West. But before I answer, I should like to ask a question myself: Are we Muslims because we believe in Allah, or do we believe in Allah because we are Muslims?

The question occurred to me during a march through the streets of London, over a decade ago, to protest against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. I’d made a formal conversion to Islam several years prior to this, and it wasn’t my first demonstration. There were banners and placards and much shouting and chanting. And in between “Russians out,” “Death to Breshnev,” and “Muslims of Afghanistan rise up,” we shouted our own Islamic slogans: Allahu akbar and La ilaha illa Allah.

Towards the end of the demonstration I was approached by a young man who introduced himself as someone interested in Islam. “Excuse me,” he said, “but what is the meaning of La ilaha illa Allah?”

Without a moment’s hesitation I answered, “There is no god but Allah.” ‘Tm not asking you to translate it,” he said, ‘Tm asking you to tell me what it really means.” There was a long awkward silence as it dawned on me that I was unable to answer him.

You are no doubt thinking, “What kind of Muslim is it that does not know the real meaning of La ilaha illa Allah?” To this I would have to say: a typical one. That evening I pondered my ignorance; being in the majority didn’t help, it simply made me more depressed.

So how did I become a Muslim? You’ve no doubt heard the anecdote about Nasreddin Hoja. A friend of his called on him one day and found Hoja sitting in front of a large basket of chillies. His eyes were red and swollen, blood dripped from his gums and tears from his eyes. Yet he carried on eating. Why are you torturing yourself, his friend asked. Because, said Nasreddin Hoja, biting into another pepper, I’m hoping one of them will be sweet.

I had been in the same position myself. No ideology or alternative life-style that I tried could satisfy the inner need for something more, something worth existing for, that elusive something that is always just around the comer but never seems to appear. Disenchanted with every aspect of my life, I left Britain and somehow drifted towards the Middle East. It was not a conscious choice. And it was there that I found the sweet chilli pepper.

Islam simply made sense, in a way that nothing else ever had. It had roles of government, it had an economic system, it had regulations covering every facet of day-to-day existence. It was egalitarian and addressed to all races, and it was clear and easy to understand. Oh, and it has a God, One God, in whom I had always vaguely believed. That was that. I said La ilaha ilia Allah and I was part of the community. For the first time in my life I belonged.

New converts are invariably enthusiastic to know as much as possible about their religion in the shortest possible time. In the few years that followed, my library grew rapidly. There was so much to learn, and so many books ready to teach. Books on the history of Islam, the economic system of Islam, the concept of government in Islam; countless manuals of Islamic jurisprudence, and, best of all, books on Islam and revolution, on how Muslims were to rise up and establish Islamic governments, Islamic republics. When I returned to Britain in early ‘79 to begin a University course, I was ready to introduce Islam to the West.

It was to these books that I turned for an answer to the question “What is the meaning of La ilaha illa Allah?” Again I was disappointed. The books were about Islam, not about Allah. They covered every subject you could possibly imagine except for the one which really mattered. I put the question to the imam at the University mosque. He made an excuse and left. Then a brother who had overheard my impertinent question to the imam came over and said: “I have a tafsir of La ilaha illa Allah. If you like we could read it together.” I imagined that it would be ten or twenty pages at the most. It turned out to have over 5000 pages, in several books. It was, as I’m sure you’re aware, the Risale-i Nur by Ustad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi.

Initially, I dismissed the Risale-i Nut as mysticism. My brother pointed out that this was the reaction of a closed mind. Without the intellectual crutches provided by my old books, I felt ignorant and lost. It was a completely new language, a totally new vision. My brother sensed my unease. He said: “Don’t worry. The books you have read before all have their place. They are the skin. But this,” he said, tapping a copy of The Supreme Sign, “this is the fruit.” So we began to read, this time in the name of Allah, and slowly things began to fall into place.

Each of us is born in total ignorance; the desire to know ourselves and our world is an innate one. Thus “Who am I? Where did I come from? What is this place in which I find myself? What is my duty here? Who is responsible for bringing me into existence’?” — these are questions which each of us answers in his own way, either through direct observation or through blind acceptance of the answers suggested by others. And how one lives one’s life, the criterion by which one acts in this world, depends totally on the nature of those answers. The Supreme Sign is no less than a guided tour of the cosmos, and the traveler is one who is seeking answers to these questions.

The Supreme Sign does not presuppose belief in God; rather it travels from the created to the Creator. And it affirms that anyone who sincerely wishes to answer the questions, and who looks upon the created world as it is, and not as he wishes or imagines it to be, must inevitably come to the conclusion La ilaha ilia Allah. For he will see order and harmony, beauty and equilibrium, justice and mercy, dominicality and munificence; and at the same time he will realize that those attributes are pointing not to the created beings themselves but to a Reality in which all of these attributes exist in perfection and absoluteness. He will see that the created world is thus a book of names, an index, which seek to tell about its Owner.

In Nature, Cause or Effect?, Bediuzzaman takes the interpretation of La ilaha illa Allah even further. The notion that he examines is that of causality, the cornerstone of materialism and the pillar upon which modern science has been constructed. Belief in causality gives rise to statements such as: It is natural; Nature created it; it happened by chance, and so on. With reasoned arguments, Bediuzzaman explodes the myth of causality and demonstrates that those who adhere to-this belief are looking at the cosmos not as it actually is, or how it appears to be, but how they would like to think it is.

In Tabiat Risalesi [Nature, Cause or Effect?], Bediuzzaman demonstrates that all beings, on all levels, are interrelated, interconnected and interdependent, like concentric or intersecting circles. He shows that beings come into existence as though from nowhere, and, during their brief lives, each with its own particular purpose, goal and mission, act as mirrors in which various attributes, and countless configurations of names, are displayed. Their createdness, transience, impotence and contin-gence, their total dependence on factors other than themselves prove beyond doubt that they cannot be the owners of that which they appear to possess, let alone bestow attributes of perfection on beings that are similar to or greater than themselves.

The materialists however, see things differently — they do not see different things. They ask us to believe that this cosmos, whose innate order and harmony they do not deny, is ultimately the work of chance. Of chaos and disorder, of sheer accident. They then ask us to believe that this cosmos is sustained by the mechanistic interplay of causes — whatever they may be, and not even the materialists know for sure — causes which are themselves created, impotent, ignorant, transient and purposeless, but which somehow contrive, through laws which appeared out of nowhere, to produce the orderly works of art of symphonies of harmony and equilibrium that we see and hear around us.

Like Abraham in the house of idols, Bediuzzaman destroys these myths and superstitions. Given that all things are inter-connected, he reiterates, whatever it is that brings existence to the seed of a flower must also be responsible for the flower itself; and given their interdependence, whatever brings into existence the flower must also be responsible for the tree; and given the fact that they are interrelated, whatever brings into existence the tree must ‘also be responsible for the forest, and so on. Thus to be able to create a single atom, one must also be able to create the whole cosmos. That is surely a tall order for a cause which is blind, impotent, transient, dependent and devoid of knowledge of our purpose.

More and more scientists are beginning to realize that the mechanistic theories of old are simply no longer sustainable. Faced with beauty, awesomeness, order, harmony, symmetry and purpose, attempts to explain away creation by evoking the idea of chance and causality are becoming increasingly untenable. Many are so outraged at the imminent collapse of their old gods that they lapse into hysteria:

One celebrated biologist — and biology is still the most rigidly mechanistic of disciplines — is on record as having said “Funnily, the more beauty and harmony I discover in the cosmos, the more convinced I become of its meaninglessness.” The poor man seems not to have understood that if everything is meaningless, his own effect to that is equally so. Another famous — or should I say infamous — scientist, also a biologist, asserts that the existence of beings, and in particular the phenomenon of form, can in no way be attributed to the random motions of blind, unknowing and impotent causes. He is not alone in his thinking, but he is the first eminent Western biologist to state such beliefs openly. Interestingly enough, he likens the state of the Western scientific fraternity to Russia under Breshnev.

The mechanistic theory is the rigid, all-powerful orthodoxy to which all scientists – biologists in particular – must bow down if they are to retain their credibility and their jobs. And so they are forced to live a fearful charade, shouting their loyalty in public but whispering their real thoughts in private. When the book in which he attacks causality was published, the magazine The New Scientist described it as a “candidate for burning.” Since then, the author of this book has become an outcast, the Salman Rushdie of Western science.

Such widely differing opinions as to the viability of the causal hypothesis show that the attribution of creative power to Nature or natural laws is by no means .the inevitable corollary of objective, scientific investigation. It is no more than a personal opinion. Similarly, denial of the Creator of the cosmos, who has placed apparent causes there as veils to cover His hand of power, is not an act of reason but an act of will. In short, causality is a crude and cunning device with which man distributes the property of the Creator among the created in order that he might set himself up as absolute owner and ruler of all that he has, and all that he is.

My aim was not to summarize the Risale-i Nur, but to show how far removed my previous conceptions about Allah were before reading this work. I thought that by saying La ilaha illa Allah, I had said all there was to be said about Allah. Thanks to the Risale-i Nur, I was now able to see that previously, God had been something that I had brought in to complete the occasion, an unknown factor placed almost arbitrarily at the beginning of creation to avoid the impossibility of infinite regression. He had been the ‘First Cause,’ the ‘Prime Mover,’ a veritable ‘God of the gaps.’ He had been rather a constitutional monarch of the English variety, who must be treated with the utmost respect but not allowed to interfere in the affairs of everyday life.

Inspired by the verse La ilaha illa Allah, the Risale-i Nut shows that the signs of God, these mirrors of His Names and attributes, are revealed to us constantly in new and ever- changing forms and configurations, eliciting acknowledgment, acceptance, submission, love and worship. The Risale-i Nur showed that there is a distinct process involved in becoming Muslim in the true sense of the word: contemplation to know-ledge, knowledge to affirmation, affirmation to belief or conviction, and from conviction to submission. And since each new moment, each new day, sees the revelation of fresh aspects of Divine truth, this process is a continuous one. The external practices of Islam, the formal acts of worship, are thus in a sense static. Belief, however, is subject to increase or decrease, depending on the continuance of the process I have just mentioned. Thus it is the reality of belief that deserves most of our attention; from there the realities of Islam will follow on inevitably.

Thus I can say that I had been a Muslim but not a believer; that which I had assumed was belief was in reality nothing more than the inability to deny. Bediuzzaman was not responsible for introducing me to Islam — which anyone could have done — but for introducing me to belief. Belief through investigation, not through imitation.

Let’s return now to the question: What do we, as Muslims, have to offer to the West. The answer is: everything and nothing. We have belief and Islam, which is everything; and we have our understanding and interpretation of Islam, which in most cases amounts nothing much at all.

As is evident from the books which introduced me to Islam, almost everything that has been written with the West in mind has been done more or less on the level of some benign cultural exchange. Almost invariably the central question of belief has been glossed over or ignored completely.

In the Qur’an, the word ‘Allah’ appears more than 2500 times, the word ‘Islam’ less than ten. In a good deal of modern Muslim writing, the ratio is roughly reversed. In the Qur’an, the ratio between iman and islam is 5:1 in favor of iman. In Arabic book titles until the end of the 19th century, islam slightly outnumbers iman in a ratio of 3:2. By the Sixties, this has had jumped to 13:1, and today it is undoubtedly higher. Inevitably, then, the approach to the West has centered on Islam as a system, as an alternative ‘ideology’, presented almost totally without reference to the realities of belief.

Another reason why our approach to the West has made little headway is that we have misunderstood the West. The West is not only a geopolitical entity, it is also a metaphor. Geographically, the West was the first place to witness a mass revolt against the Divine. Modem Western civilization is the first of which we have knowledge that does not have some formal structure of religious belief at its heart. The West is thus a metaphor for the setting of the sun of religious belief; a metaphor for the eclipse of God. And since this eclipse is no longer confined to the geopolitical West, one may say that wherever the truths of belief have been discarded, there is the West. Thus the West should be seen as a state of mind, a disease, an aberration. The root cause of this, as Bediuzzaman Said Nursi points out, is the disease of self-worship, of ‘ENE’ (Ana, the T or ego).

From the beginning of the Renaissance, man in the West has been his own point of reference, the center of his own universe, the sole criterion by which he lives out his pathetic life. He has stolen the clothes of the Divine Names and has dressed himself in them and paraded as God. The problem is that they do not fit, and cannot fit. Unwilling to accept that his duty is merely to reflect the Divine attributes in the name of the Creator and according to His Will, he claims them as his own property and spends a lifetime trying to add to his imaginary possessions. Seeking the infinite from the finite drags him into a fierce and often murderous competition with his fellow beings. Man’s endless desires are heightened by the fact that he is limited, impotent and dependent, and bound one day to give up all that he imagined was his and face annihilation. His limitations and deficiencies, which should serve to remind him of his absolute dependence and impotence, he contrives to conceal. Western man frees from ill thoughts of his ultimate destiny, smothers his innate ability to know and love the Creator, to recognize that man is nothing and can have nothing of his own. ~

The secular, self-absorbed society of the West is designed on all levels to blind and stupefy. T0 mask the fact that the religion of the self has failed to live up to its promises; that the secular trinity of ‘unlimited progress, absolute freedom and unrestricted happiness’ is as meaningless as the Christian Trinity discarded centuries ago. To cover up the fact that economic and scientific progress which has secular humanism as its underlying ethos, has turned the West into a spiritual wasteland and ravaged generation after generation. Yet there are those who are beginning to awake, to realize the illusion under which they have been living. It is to these that the disease of ENE must be pointed out. It is no use telling one who is afflicted with this disease that the Islamic economic or judicial system is the most egalitarian or most just. You cannot cure a man suffering from cancer by giving him a new coat. What is needed is a correct diagnosis, radical surgery and constant back-up treatment. The Risale-i Nur provides all of these. You will recall that I dismissed the Risale-i Nur initially as mysticism, and I have also heard others describe it thus. The troth is otherwise, for there is nothing esoteric about the stark choice Said Nursi puts before us: belief or unbelief, eternal felicity or eternal wretchedness, salvation or perdition, heaven or hell — in this world and the next.

I have also heard the Risale-i Nur described as revolutionary, and with this I agree. But I am not talking about revolution in the political sense of the word. There is no mention of this in the Risale-i Nut, although I am sure that had Bediuzzaman advocated the violent overthrow of all secular governments, the Risale-i Nur would be required reading in every Western university, and Bediuzzaman would be a household name in the West.

After all, the West has a soft spot for extremism, especially when flavored with religion. What can be better, more beautiful, more delicious in the eyes of the Western media than the sight of thousands of angry Muslims in some far-off, violent city screaming “Death to America!” and demanding revolution and the re-introduction of the Shari’a? The West no longer has to go to the trouble of misrepresenting Islam: we do it for them, and they simply film it for their own consumption. I remember watching such a demonstration over a decade ago, in a place where America is known as the great Satan. What struck me at the time was the fact that maybe 70% of the crowd were dressed in Levis, and that every cigarette smoked as the demonstration dispersed was either a Marlborough or a Winston. As one hand cuts a or claims to cut a the ties that bind us to the West, the other hand fastens them even tighter.

Yet still we claim that it is time for action, that we have spoken enough. I’ve actually heard this said in reference to the Risale-i Nur. It is all talk, someone said, and no action. But we have not talked, we have merely moaned and wailed. And because we have not talked, not conversed, brother to brother, believer to believer, Muslim to Muslim, in the name of Allah, in the language of the Qur’an and in the language of the book of creation, then when we act we set incorrectly, without authority, without discipline, without a true criterion and frame of reference. And ultimately without any lasting result. The West understands this perfectly.

No, the kind of revolution clamoured for on the streets of Tehran, Cairo or Algiers is not the kind of ‘revolution that Bediuzzaman advocates. The kind of revolution envisaged by the Risale-i Nur is a revolution of the mind, of the heart, of the soul and the spirit. It is not an Islamic revolution but a revolution of belief. As such it works on two levels: it is designed to lead Muslims from belief by imitation to belief through investigation, and to lead unbelievers from worship of the self to worship of Allah. And that is why, in the eyes of those who control the West, a work such as the Risale-i Nur is deadly.

Finally, I would say this: After many years of searching and comparing, I can say that the Risale-i Nur is the only self-contained, comprehensive Islamic work that sees the cosmos as it actually is, presents the reality of belief as it truly is, interprets the Qur’an as our Prophet intended, diagnoses the real and very dangerous diseases that afflict modern man, and offers a cure. A work such as the Risale-i Nur, which reflects the light of the Qur’an and illuminates the cosmos, cannot be ignored. For only Islam stands between modern man and catastrophe, and I believe that the future of Islam depends on the Risale-i Nur and on those who follow and are inspired by its teachings.

“I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him – the wonderful man and in my opinion for from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.”

George Bernard Shaw, THE GENUINE ISLAM

“The teachings of Islam can fail under no circumstances. With all our systems of culture and civilization, we cannot go beyond Islam and, as a matter of fact, no human mind can go beyond the Koran.”

Johann Goethe, cited in Sir Henry Elliot’s Letters of Johann Goethe, 1865.

“The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.”

A.J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial, New York, 1948, p. 205.

“It (Islam) replaced monkishness by manliness. It gives hope to the slave, brotherhood to mankind, and recognition of the fundamental facts of human nature.”

Canon Taylor, (Paper read before the Church Congress at Walverhamton, Oct. 7, 1887, Quoted by Arnond in The Preaching of Islam, pp. 71-72.)

“Sense of justice is one of the most wonderful ideals of Islam, because as I read in the Qur’an I find those dynamic principles of life, not mystic but practical ethics for the daily conduct of life suited to the whole world.”

Sarojini Naidu, (Lectures on “The Ideals of Islam” see Speeches and Writings of Sarojini Naidu, Madras, 1918, p. 167.)

“History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated.”

De Lacy O’Leary, Islam at the Crossroads, London, 1923, p.8.

The sayings of Mohammed are a treasure of wisdom not only for Muslims but for all of mankind.

Gandhi, Preface to The Sayings of Mohammed by Sohrawardi

“I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I hope I am a “Muslim” as “one surrendered to God”, but I believe that embedded in the Quran and other expressions of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other occidentals have still much to learn, and ‘Islam is certainly a strong contender for the supplying of the basic framework of the one religion of the future.”

W. Montgomery Watt, Islam and Christianity Today, London, 1983, p.IX.

“I believe in One God and Mohammed the Apostle of God,’ is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue, and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion.”

Edward Gibbon & Simon Ocklay, HISTORY OF THE SARACEN EMPIRE, London, 1870, p. 54.

“The doctrine of brotherhood of Islam extends to all human beings, no matter what color, race or creed. Islam is the only religion which has been able to realize this doctrine in practice. Muslims wherever on the world they are will recognize each other as brothers.”

R. L. Mellema, Holland, Anthropologist, Writer and Scholar.

“He was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope’s pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports.”

Bosworth Smith, MOHAMMAD AND MOHAMMADANISM, London, 1874, p. 92.

I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind…. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet’s biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life.

Mahatma Gandhi, statement published in ‘Young India’,1924

“The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only…A silent great soul, one of that who cannot but be earnest. He was to kindle the world, the world’s Maker had ordered so.”

Thomas Carlyle in ‘Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History’, 1840

“Vicdanın ziyası ulum-u diniyedir. Aklın nuru fünun-u medeniyedir. İkisinin imtizacıyla hakikat tecelli eder. O iki cenah ile talebenin himmeti pervaz eder. İftirak ettikleri vakit birincisinde taassub, ikincisinde hile ve şüphe tevellüd eder”

Said Nursi – Münazarat