God and Tawhid in Classical Islamic Theology and Said Nursi's Risale-i Nur

Abstract

Theology is a rational endeavour to understand everything about God, from within a faith tradition and its scriptures, and in response to problems posed by the conditions of a particular time and place. Islamic theology, in particular, has been a reactive discipline. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1876-1960), as a prominent scholar in the modern era, lived through a tumultuous period witnessing the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of secular nation states for the first time in Muslim history, two world wars, and the challenges imposed by European modernity on traditional Muslim societies and Islam. Unlike other revivalist leaders, in dealing with the complexity of circumstances and the social and political restrictions around him, Nursi chose to respond following a theological revival method, where he attempted to revive Islam by renewing faith in people through his theological writings. By loading so much significance and revivalist objectives to theology, Nursi produced an original and fresh expression of Islamic theology based on the Qur’an. In this thesis, my original contribution to knowledge is the critical evaluation of Nursi’s writings about God and identification of his contributions to Islamic understanding of God and tawḥīd as the central doctrine of Islam.