Almost everyone in the society has become a born sycophant… Said Nursi is a fighting man. A simple will, an uncompromising temperament… Our recent history has known only one mujahideen, and that is Said Nursi… When I say Muslim thinker, I know him with his majesty and jihad, but not others. All of them are people who run away when they hear beef-hearths. I have not seen another one… He is a man with a cause who has struggled by enduring every distress and cruelty for 60 years.

“I am an idea man. The idea man means the man who lives for the idea. In this respect, it is the dignity, solemnity and honor of our country that every right or wrong idea expresses itself in absolute and perfect freedom… Said Nursi is an apostle. He is a mujahid. He is the spreader of a worldview. Whether he agrees with this worldview or not, it is the duty of every honest person to circulate and publish the Islamic ideas that spring from the bosom of this soil, which have proven their tranquility, fortitude, seriousness and sincerity by passing the tests of centuries.”

I got to know Said Nursi very late. If I had had the opportunity to know hım and examine his works in my early youth years, my lifestyle and my way of life would have been different. I probably wouldn't have lost my eyes at such an early age.

The truth that I sought after by turning to the West first, I found again in the East. In the East, I got to know Said Nursi as the brightest star. Since the Reforms(Tanzimat), I have only known him in the office of representing Islamic thought. No other person can fill this position or give it its due.

Said Nursi gathered the world-wide truths of Islamic wisdom in a small treatise. Master walks around with great confidence in these dark regions illuminated by the flash of lightning. The style is strong and the explanations are convincing. The call of a contemplation that embraces the centuries to the contemporary understanding, the bravery of Bediuzzaman, who represents the Islamic contemplation, against the wounded comprehension amd an alienated comprehension are the manifestation of his firm belief.

Since Vak`a-yı Hayriye (Tanzimat) (1839), great names of Islamic thought have not appeared in our country. There is only Said Nursi. I don't know of any other man worthy of respect. I got to know him. “When I said 'Muslim thinker', I recognized him with his celibacy and jihad, but I did not know anyone else.

All of them are people who run away when they say ‘beef-hearts!'. Yes, there is no great Islamic thinker after Tanzimat. If it did, we wouldn't be here anyway. So if it did, it would be a struggle… There was no struggle. We wore what they said to wear, we threw away what they said to throw. We also ruined the language.

While all these murders were taking place, everyone shuddered and cowered.

Said Nursi was the only one who made his voice, that's all.

Said's disciple, a forest of apostles. Monolithic and dense. The trees are fused with each other. And a nameless hum rises in his bosom. The sometimes muffled, sometimes majestic echo of the Treatises of Nur, resembling a storm wind.

Said is a master preaching at the top of the mountain. Those who were despised, those who lost everything, those whose holy things were violated, flocked to him.

This sound was coming from behind the steep walls of the Nass, it was coming from the history. It awakened hundreds of thousands of people who had withdrawn into their shells. This dream people came true as he spoke. In other words, there was ‘the kalam’ before the ‘Nurcus’. As he talked, cardboard sets of secularism were demolished one by one. The city and the village, the level of modern civilization (!) and Anatolia, hesitantly faith… They came face to face.

Nursi’s way is a reaction.

The revolt of the madrasa against a barren and artificial university, faith against unbelief, the East against the West. Every treatise is a cry, a cry of the subconscious. 

Translated by Ekrem Başçı