TO EAT OR TO BE: A MUSLIM PERSPECTIVE ON FOOD CONSUMPTION AND EXCESS - THE CASE STUDY OF SAID NURSI OF TURKEY

Dr Hasan Horkuc

SAID NURSI (1876-1960) “The conscience is illuminated by the

religious sciences, and the mind is illuminated by the sciences of civilization and wisdom occurs through the combination of these two.”

The ‘Nur’ movement seeks to raise individuals’ religious consciousness through an education system based on Nursi’s ideas.

QUOTE BY POPPER “... the Naturalist revolt against God, which

preceded the historians’ revolt, replaced God with Nature. Apart from this, almost everything remained the same. Naturalism replaced theology, natural laws replaced Divine laws, natural will and power (the forces of Nature) replaced Divine will and power, and finally Natural Selection replaced the Divine order and judgement. Naturalist determinism replaced theological determinism, that is, Nature’s being omnipotent and omniscient replaced God’s being omnipotent and omniscient.”

QUOTE BY FROMM “Christianity has preached spiritual renewal,

neglecting the changes in the social order without which spiritual renewal must remain ineffective for the majority of the people. The age of enlightenment has postulated as the highest norms independent judgement and reason; it preached political equality without seeing that political equality could not lead to the realization of the brotherhood of man if it was not accompanied by a fundamental change in the social-economic organization. Socialism, and especially Marxism, has stressed the necessity for social and economic changes, and neglected the necessity of the inner change in human beings, without which economic change can never lead to the “good society”.”

TO HAVE OR TO BE AND/OR TO EAT OR TO BE “I want everything for myself; that possessing, not

sharing, gives me pleasure; that I must become greedy because if my aim is having, I am more the more I have; that I must feel antagonistic towards all others: my customers whom I want to deceive, my competitors whom I want to destroy, my workers whom I want to exploit. I can never be satisfied, because there is no end to my wishes; I must be envious of those who have more and afraid of those who have less. But I have to repress all these feelings in order to present myself (to others as well as to myself) as the smiling, rational, sincere, kind human being as everybody pretends to be. The passion for having must lead to never ending class war…”

EGOTISM “A fearful egotism arising from heedlessness

and love of this world rules at this time. The people of reality, therefore, have to give up egotism and selfishness, even if it is in a licit form. Since the Risale-i Nur students dissolve their egotism, which is an ice-block, in the joint pool of their collective personality, they will not be shaken by this storm, God willing.”

NEEDS VERSUS TO HAVE AND TO EAT “In the nomadic stage, man needed only three or

four things, and it was only two out of ten who could not obtain them. But now, through wastefulness, abuses, stimulating the appetites, and such things as custom and addiction, present-day civilization has made inessential needs seem essential, and in place of the four things of which he used to be in need, modern civilized man is now in need of twenty. And it is only two out of twenty who can satisfy those needs in a totally licit way; eighteen remain in need in some way. That is to say, modern civilization greatly impoverishes man. Because of the needs, it drives man to wrongdoing and illicit gain. It perpetually encourages the wretched lower classes to challenge the upper classes.”

TO EAT OR TO BE “When man’s instinctual soul eats and drinks

just as it pleases, it is both harmful for man’s physical life from the medical point of view, and when it hurls itself on everything it encounters whether licit or illicit, it quite simply poisons his spiritual life. Further, it is difficult for such a soul to obey the heart and the spirit; it wilfully takes the reins into its own hands and then man cannot ride it, it rather rides man. But by means of fasting in Ramadan, it becomes accustomed to a sort of diet. It tries to discipline itself and learns to listen to commands.”

TO EAT OR TO BE “The sphere of need stretches as far as the eye can

see. In fact, wherever the imagination goes, the sphere of need extends that far. There is need there too. Whatever man lacks, he is in need of. That which he does not have, he needs. And what he lacks is endless...

For example, even if the whole world were given to man, due to his greed, he would say: “Are there any more?”(50:30) And due to his selfishness, he finds it acceptable that a thousand people should suffer harm for his own sake. And so on. He may advance endlessly in bad morality and reach the degree of the Nimrods and Pharaohs; as is shown by the use of the intensive form in the verse above (33:72), he is given to great wrongdoing. Similarly, he may manifest endless progress in good morality, and rise to the level of the prophets and veracious ones.

A TREATISE ON FRUGALITY 1) “Frugality expresses the meaning of thanks” 2) Frugality “shows respect towards the Divine

mercy manifested in the bounties” 3) Frugality “shows respect towards the Divine

mercy manifested in the bounties” 4) To practise frugality while meeting the need for

food is health-giving from the medical point of view, besides affording spiritual benefits and other profitable aspects.

5) Frugality “saves a person from the degradation of what is in effect begging, and so is a cause of self-respect.”

6) Frugality allows one to experience the pleasure in bounties.

FINE-TUNED UNIVERSE “The laws of science, as we know them at

present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. ... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.” by S Hawking

NO WASTE AND EXCESS IN UNIVERSE “Thus, everything from the cells of an animate body, the

red and white corpuscles in the blood, the transformations of minute particles, and the mutual proportion and relation of the body’s organs, to the incomings and outgoings of the seas, the income and expenditure of springs under the earth, the birth and death of animals and plants, the destruction of autumn and the reconstruction of spring, the duties and motion of the elements and the stars, and the alternations, struggles and clashes of death and life, light and darkness, and heat and cold, are ordered and weighed with so sensitive a balance, so fine a measure, that the human mind can nowhere see any waste or futility, just as human science and philosophy observe everywhere and demonstrate the most perfect order and beautiful symmetry. Indeed, human science and philosophy are a manifestation and interpreter of that order and symmetry.”

CONCLUSION Subconsciously rejects the contemporary idea

of having mode and in favour of being mode Proposes that eradication of the immoral

issues is only possible by implying the Qur'anic moral injunctions such as almsgiving, frugality, endeavour and labour

Uses qualitative personal attitudes to set a barrier between man’s deadly desires of having or eating modes

“Man’s happiness in this life lies in frugality and endeavour, and it is through them that the rich and poor will be reconciled.”