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Abstract
The premise of this article is that we can learn something about the spirituality as well as other orientations of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and the movement he inspired by taking a comparative perspective. Among other twentieth-century movements in the Muslim world, it has been suggested that the ‘faith’ movement of Maulana Muhammad Ilyas, also known as the Tablighi Jamaat, would be the most apt for comparison. This study therefore highlights comparable and contrasting aspects of these two movements in order to shed light on Nursian spirituality. It will consider, for example, the lives of the founders, the contexts in which their activities arose, their teachings and practices, and the subsequent development of the respective movements.
Notes
1. I am indebted to Ibrahim Abu Rabi' for initially suggesting this parallel at an American Academy of Religion panel on the teachings of Said Nursi in November 2004.
2. Khalid Masud, personal communication, May 2005.
3. This treatise is ‘Muslim Degeneration and Its Only Remedy’. The Tablighi Nisaab is a collection of texts prominently used in the Tabligh movement. Hasan's early series of articles, Tabligh Kiya Hai (What Is Tabligh) (New Delhi, n.d.) is now difficult to find among the Tablighi publications.
4. Note that Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762) was an Indian Naqshbandi Sufi in the tradition of Sirhindi.
5. For a study of his autobiography, see Metcalf, Citation2004. On the contents of the Nisaab, see Masud, Citation2000, pp. 82–85.
6. <http://www.deruhte.com/mods.php?go=News&p=dn&news_id =116> (accessed 5 June 2007).
7. < http://www.nur.org/, http://www.bediuzzaman.org/> (accessed May 2005).
8. Nadwi Citation(1983) and Haq Citation(1972) have been characterized as being close to hagiographies of Ilyas.
9. The use of jāhiliyya (the pre-Islamic ‘age of ignorance’) refers here to the way in which Sayyid Qutb used the term to criticize the adoption of Western elements in Muslim societies.