Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

158 islamic political identity in turkeytion” but rather a mode of thinking about reconnecting with God and formingone’s personality.Nursi contrasted the social, political, and cultural implications of living ina faithful versus a faithless society. He deWned faith as understanding humanlife from birth to death in terms of Qur’anic concepts. He argued that by replacingfaith through imitation (taklidi iman) with faith by inquiry (tahkiki iman),Muslims would be able to resist the forces of modern positivism, namely materialismand atheism. A Muslim must inquire why he or she is created and howone comes to exist. After becoming conscious of these questions, Muslims canconstruct a community with this consciousness. He argued that all virtues—justice, peace, honesty, integrity, and love—emanate from faith in a higher judgeand religiously based moral precepts; whereas anarchy, egoism, oppression, andpoverty are all outcomes of the lack of faith and moral precepts. 35 Faith, therefore,is the basis of a moral community and the source of knowledge concerningthe phenomenal world. Nursi expressed his beliefs in terms of the conceptsof faith (iman), and life (hayat) whereby faith is experienced in everyday practices,and the social order is shaped by Islam (sharia). 36 He argued that faith isformed through connections between the heart, the brain, and the spirit, whereaslife is a zone where faith is expressed through behaving according to Islamicmores.Nursi realized that in the modern era, dominated by the empiricism of theEnlightenment, faith could be sustained only if believers actively attempted tounderstand and interpret Islam. He made the text comprehensible to ordinarypeople in everyday language so that they could understand and contemplate.Nursi’s approach, therefore, represents a turning point from an ulema/SuWlodge–based imitative understanding of Islam to a more complex, reXectiveunderstanding. He argued that the Muslims of Turkey could not maintain theirfaith by mimicking their forefathers or Europe but only through critical anddeliberative analysis.Challenging PositivismThe main characteristic of positivism is its view that science is the only validknowledge. The only way to achieve progress, then, is by using science to guidehuman conduct and society. The main target of Turkish positivists was Islam,which they viewed as a source of backwardness. The Republic used the neweducation system to institutionalize a “positive” religion in place of traditionaltheological religions. This divorce of man from his sacred roots was, for Nursi,the source of poverty, war, and animosity. Responding to the penetrating impactof positivism in the Turkish educational system and the total collapse ofthe Islamic educational system, Nursi tried to demonstrate the compatibility ofscience and religion; freedom and faith; and modernity and tradition. He updatedthe idioms of Islam in terms of the dominant universal discourses of science,human rights, and the rule of law. Although Nursi was reacting to thispositivist philosophy, he also was constrained by the consequences of new so-