Rescuing the Muslim collective self: the Nur case in light of the Modern Muslim Subjectivities Project

Abstract

There is a tendency in the literature to emphasise how contemporary Islamic movements promote ways of living a pious Muslim life alternative to those proposed by secular liberal modernity. For this reason, the domains of religious and civic engagement have often been thought of as opposed to each other. In counterpoint to this tendency, the paper explores the intertwining of national views about mass education and modern citizenship with a renewed Islamic emphasis on the need for moral and ethical reform of society within the Nur movement in modern Turkey. Methodologically, the paper draws upon ethnographic material from research conducted in 2010 on the Suffa community in Istanbul, as well as on an account of the life and projects of the leader of the movement, Said Nursi, mainly drawn from secondary sources. This case is explored in light of the theories of successive modernities that inspired the analytical framework for the Modern Muslim Subjectivities Project applied in this special issue. In so doing, it illustrates the complex nexus that Nursi established between long-standing views of Islamic ethics and modern perspectives on education and civic engagement in response to the emergence of the modern nation-state in the first half of the 20th century.