Facing the Challenges of Muslim Education :

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi’s System of education

Outline

Purpose of life is to seek understanding

• Man came to this world to be perfected by means of knowledge and supplication.

one proof of learning as the purpose of life

CHALLENGES OF EDUCATION

• 1922: establishment of the Turkish Republic• 1924-25: abolishment of the caliphate, sharia

courts, closure of medreses, Sufi houses• 1 January 1926: adoption of the Swiss Civil

Code• 3 nov 1928: banning of the Arabic alphabet• 1932: banning of the Arabic Adhan

• BANNING OF HIJAB• KILLING OF MUSLIM

SCHOLARS• BANNING OF ISLAMIC

GATHERINGS / DISCUSSIONS

• ADOPTION OF NON-ISLAMIC EDUCATION IMPOSITION OF (NEGATIVE ) EUROPEAN

LIFESTYLE AND CULTURE

INCORPORATION OF DARWINISM/ MATERIALIST/ATHEIST

PHILOSOPHY IN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

HIS EDUCATIONAL AİMS, AND METHODOLOGY OF EDUCATION

BEDIUZZAMAN SAID NURSI : FACING THE CHALLENGES AS A SCHOLAR AND TEACHER

Born 1877 in Nurs, one of the Eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. (now Van, Turkey) At 15 yrs old, he was given the title ‘Bediuzzaman’ meaning the wonder of age, after successfully defeating the ulama at all debates.

At 20 yrs old, he founded his own medrese where he put into practice his ideas for educational reform , based on the combined teaching of the traditional religious and modern sciences.

1911- Damascus Sermon 1914-1916 FIRST WORLD WAR. led the army against the

Russian attack . Continued to teach his students while training them in warfare. Later captured and escaped .

• 1918- escape from Russia to Istanbul . • Appointed to the Daru’l Hikmeti Islamiye, a

learned institution seeking solutions to the problems facing Islam.

• Published numerous works• 1919- founder-member of Medrese Teachers’

Association; Green Crescent Society

1. COMBINE RELIGIOUS SCIENCES AND MODERN SCIENCES

COMBINED: SEPARATED :

2. TEACH PEACE AND ORDER

3 enemies 3 weapons

3. TO INTRODUCE THE MODERN EDUCATIONAL APPROACHES INTO THE MADARIS

4. RECONCILIATION OF THE INMATES OF RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS AND MODERN SCHOOLS

5. REFORM AND UNIFICATION OF THE MADARIS

TO PURIFY ISLAM OF VARIOUS ACCRETIVE STORIES, ISRAELIYAT AND BIGOTRY

• 1925: exiled in Barla• 1926-1934: starts to write treatises to answer

the people’s religious needs, who were now deprived of all means of religious education. His writings, later called THE RISALE-I NUR COLLECTION, which aimed to prove and explain the fundamentals of belief , evoked a powerful popular response, and began to spread secretly throughout the region.

THE RISALE-I NUR (TREATISE OF LIGHT)

1. the Risale- i Nur’s source: the Qur’an

• ‘ the Risale-I nur belongs to the Qur’an. I am but a faulty servant of it, like one proclaiming the wares of the jeweller’s shop’

The risale-i nur’s function: save belief

‘ I have sacrificed even my life in the hereafter to save the community’s religious belief . I neither long for paradise, nor fear hell. I would not want Paradise even, if the Qur’an has no listeners on the

earth; it would be a prison for me.’

‘ to bring to belief those without belief, strengthen the belief of those whose belief is weak, make certain the belief of those whose belief is strong but imitative, give greater breadth to the belief of those whose

belief is certain..’

1. The direct lecturing method (taqrir)

1. The direct lecturing method (taqrir) A. Uses language powerfully

• B. Consider individual differences . •

• “don’t give meat to the horse and grass to the lion.”

Don’t teach everything to everyone. Put quality before quantity and provide people with what they need.

“everything you say should be true, but don’t say everything that is true”

: its readers virtually see paradise in return for their good deeds, and hell requital for their bad deeds.

Takes the psychology of its readers into consideration.

1. The direct lecturing method (taqrir)C. Counsels with good words and deeds

‘If you tell a bad man he is good, he may improve.

Tell a good man he is bad, he may degenerate.’

“ He who sees the good things has good thoughts. And he who has

good thoughts receive pleasure from life. “

“ if you wish to defeat your enemy , then respond to his evil with good. For if you respond with evil, enmity will increase, and even though he will outwardly be defeated , he will nurture hatred in his heart, and hostility will persist.

1. The direct lecturing method (taqrir) D. Provides a good example through comparisons

• “ the most distant truths were brought close through the telescope of the mystery of comparisons. Through the aspect of unity of the mystery of comparisons, the most scattered matters were collected together. Through the stairs of the mystery of comparisons, the highest truths were easily reached. Through the window of the mystery of comparisons, a certainty of belief in the truths of the unseen and fundamentals of Islam was obtained close to the degree of “ witnessing’ the intellect, as well as the imagination and fancy, and the soul and the caprice, were compelled to submit, and Satan too was compelled to surrender his weapons.. Whatever beauty and effectiveness are found in my writings , they are only flashes of the Qur’anic comparisons.

1. The direct lecturing method (taqrir)

E. GRADUALNESS

TRAINING OUR HUMAN FACULTIES

2. The Question and Answer method

Bediuzzaman takes as his addresee a ‘collective personality’ afflicted with negative ideas, and supplies answers to the question he thinks it would ask.

“Here, all questions are answered, but no questions are asked.”

3. The active learning method

• True learning is possible only through experience.

• The training of the spirit, human faculties, body is done through the practice of worship.

• “ O YOU WHO BELIEVE! IF YOU FEAR ALLAH, HE WILL GRANT YOU A CRITERION (TO JUDGE BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG).

THROUGHOUT THIS ACTIVE LEARNING PROCESS, THE TEACHER STILL ACTS AS AN EXPERIENCED AND

LEARNED GUIDE

4. OBSERVATIONAL METHODA. EXTERNAL OBSERVATION

In many verses of the Qur’an , we are tasked to observe and reflect Ex. 2:164‘BEHOLD! IN THE CREATION OF

THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH; IN THE ALTERNATION OF THE NIGHT AND THE DAY;IN THE SAILING OF THE SHIPS THROUGH THE OCEAN FOR THE PROFIT OF MANKIND;IN THE RAIN WHICH ALLAH SENDS DOWN FROM THE SKY;IN THE CHANGE OF THE WINDS…INDEED ARE SIGNS FOR A PEOPLE WHO REFLECT.’

• In many parts of the Risale-i Nur, the universe is referred to a book filled with letters that speak about its author. He leads the readers to observe and reflect on the innumerable signs pointing to the existence and oneness of Allah.

EX. From THE SUPREME SIGN

Your Sustainer inspired in the bee that it should seek a dwelling-place in the mountains. Qur’an, 16:68

For to inscribe in the minute head of that little honey-machine a complete programme for the fulfilment of its important task; to place in its diminutive stomach the most delicious of foods and to ripen it there; to place in its sting poison capable of destroying and killing animate beings, without causing any harm to its own body or the member in question - to do all this without the utmost care and knowledge, with exceeding wisdom and purposiveness, partakes of a perfect orderliness and equilibriium, and hence unconscious, disorderly, disequilibriated nature and accident could never interfere or participate in any of this.

The appearance and comprehensiveness of this Divine craft, this dominical deed, which is miraculous in three separate respects, in the countless bees that are found scattered over the earth, with the same wisdom, the same care, the same symmetry, at the same time and in the same fashion - this is a self-evident proof of Allah’s unity.

4. OBSERVATIONAL METHOD B. INWARD OBSERVATION

• REFLECTIVE THOUGHT, INNER EXPERIENCES, INSPIRATION, ILLUMINATION

• ‘IT IS GREAT PROFIT FOR AN UNFORTUNATE LIKE MYSELF WHO WAITS AT THE DOOR OF THE GRAVE TO MAKE ONE HOUR WHICH MIGHT BE PASSED IN HEEDLESSNESS THAN HOURS OF WORSHIP.”

• “ HOWEVER, since our way is not the Sufi path but the way of reality, we are not compelled to perform this contemplation in an imaginary and hypothetical form like the Sufis. .our way is to go in the mind to the future from the present in respect of reality”

NEW CHALLENGES

EDUCATION 50 YEARS LATER

NO NEED FOR SCHOOLS

WALLS AS TEACHERS

WHAT STEPS TO TAKE?

CONCLUSION

• WE ARE IN NEED OF RELIGIOUS SCIENCES AS WELL AS MODERN SCIENCES TO BE TAUGHT IN ISLAMIC INSTITUTIONS.

• WE ARE IN NEED OF READING OF QURAN AS WELL AS READING OF THE BOOK OF UNIVERSE.