Nurculuk

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Nurculuk is a name for the Said Nursî religious reform movement in Turkey . The term Nurcu (roughly "follower of light") is used by many followers, but is also rejected by many as discriminatory and incorrect.

Beginnings and goals of the movement

The founder of the Nurculuk movement was the Kurdish-Turkish Islamic scholar Said Nursi, whose work in opposition to Ataturk's reform policy from 1923 was aimed at reviving Islam and reconciling it with the requirements of the modern world. Said Nursi was around 50 years old at the time. The pivotal point was Said Nursi's literary oeuvre, which comprises around 150 writings, some of which he wrote in Ottoman script while in exile or in prisons . These works were copied, distributed and read by his followers. This copying and reading activity was the nucleus of the Nurculuk movement. The aim of Said Nursi and his movement was a pan-Islamic state with Mecca and Medina as the center and Sharia as the legal system.

Subgroups of the Nur Cemaati

The first split occurred during Said Nursi's lifetime. When Said Nursi's works were allowed to be printed in 1956 , he decided that they should be published in Latin script.

After his death in 1960, the majority of the supporters of Said Nursi rallied behind the advice of the ağabeys , his closest companions during his lifetime. Its most important representatives were Zübeyir Gündüzalp, Mustafa Sungur and Bayram Yüksel. Especially in the mid-1960s and again after the military coup of 1971 , government agencies persecuted the Nur students for allegedly anti-subversive activities, which were never proven. This group published the daily Yeni Asya from 1971 (hence Yeni Asyacılar ), and from 1977 the monthly “Köprü”. In the 1970s they fought against the influence of Marxism in Turkish society. However, they did not support the followers of Necmettin Erbakan's Millî Görüş movement, as they reject their political concept as an undemocratic political instrumentalization of religion. After the military coup in 1980, their magazines were banned several times because they polemicized against the military constitution . Taking sides against the military regime and the motherland party of Turgut Özal was not without controversy. In 1990 the group of Yeni Nesil (= New Generation) around Mehmed Fırıncı split off from the Yeni Asya group. The new generation run a publishing house and the radio station "Moral FM". Your publisher publishes numerous novels , non-fiction books and guides.

As early as 1980, a group of Nurcus split off from Mehmed Kırkıncı, who lived in Erzurum , because they supported the coup of Kenan Evren . Later they supported the motherland party of Turgut Özal. In general, the political ideas of this group are more authoritarian. The magazine "Zafer" is close to her.

A large group of Nur-disciples around Mustafa Sungur formed into the group of Okuyucular (= readers), which regards itself as the "classic form" of the Nurculuk movement. They focus on reading the writings of Said Nursi.

On the other hand, the magazine Karakalem stands for a more intellectual orientation .

There is also an association of Nurcus of Kurdish origin that operates the Tenvir Neşriyat publishing house in Istanbul. As they denounce the other Nurcu factions of Turkish chauvinism, their relations with them are strained.

Gulen movement

Fethullah Gülen's movement, which emerged as a local group in İzmir and the surrounding area in the late 1960s and expanded to other parts of Turkey from the mid-1980s, plays a special role . He is regarded by scientists as the most important representative and central leader of the students of Said Nursi, although he never called himself a nurcu . As a child he came a. through the influential Sufi teacher Muhammed Lutfi Efendi with the teachings of Said Nursi. Gulen was particularly influenced by Said Nursi's reinterpretation of the Koran in the light of modern science, by the commitment to democracy and the connection between reason and revelation. Nursi's ideas became the cornerstone of Gülen's later teachings and writings.

The Gülen movement has hundreds of thousands of members, making it one of the largest - if not the largest - Islamic movement in Turkey. The Gülen movement has hundreds of sub-organizations and congresses in around 50 countries.

The Fethullah Gülens movement, inside and outside Turkey, is accused of trying to systematically infiltrate the Turkish police and judiciary and thereby establish a state within the state .

Nurcus in Europe

The Nurculuk Brotherhood, whose overall management is the responsibility of a working group of equal “brothers” in Istanbul , is said to have 10 million members in 100 countries worldwide. In Germany the Nurculuk movement is organized in the umbrella organization Jam'at-un Nur (Islamic Community of Divine Light eV) based in Cologne. The quadrupling of the number of members in the second half of the 1990s is also a success of Fethullah Gülens, who started an intensive publicity campaign in December 1994. According to her own information, she has 120 madrasahs in Germany . Similar associations exist in Austria and the Netherlands .

In Germany the Risale-i Nur Schüler and the Nurculuk movement are represented by the umbrella organization "European Risale-i Nur Association".

Religious Practices and the Community Life of the Nurcus

At the center of the religious practice of the Nurcus is the sohbet , a gathering after evening prayer , at which, among other things, the works of Said Nursi ( Risale-i Nur ) are recited, which show the miracles of Islam.

The Nurcus run numerous student residences that are run according to religious principles.

The daily newspaper Yeni Asya is regarded as the mouthpiece of the movement .

literature

  • Agai Bekim: Between network and discourse: the educational network around Fethullah Gülen (born 1941): The flexible implementation of modern Islamic ideas , Schenefeld, 2004 ISBN 3-936912-10-6
  • Cemil Şahinöz : The Nurculuk Movement. Creation, organization and networking . The first sociological and scientific analysis of the movement, Nesil Verlag: Istanbul 2008, ISBN 978-975-269-620-4 (a work by a representative of the movement)
  • Spuler, Ursula: "Nurculuk" in Tilman Nagel (Ed.): Studies on the minority problem in Islam. Bd. I. Bonn: Self-published by the Oriental Seminar of the Univ. 1973. pp. 100-182.
  • Ursula Spuler : "Nurculuk. A modern Islamic movement." In: Wolfgang Voigt (Ed.): XIX. German Orientalist Day. Lectures. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1977. (= Journal of the German Oriental Society Supplement III, 2). Pp. 1246-1252. Digitized
  • Spuler, Ursula: "On the organizational structure of the Nurculuk movement" in Hans-Robert Roemer (ed.): Studies on the history and culture of the Middle East: Festschrift for Bertold Spuler on his 70th birthday. Leiden, Brill, 1981. pp. 423-443.
  • Riexinger Martin / Bülent Ucar (eds.): A traditional scholar faces modernity. Said Nursi 1876-1960 . V&R unipress, Osnabrück 2017, ISBN 978-3-8471-0695-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Politics in the Name of Allah. Islamism - A Challenge for Europe ”, 2001, pp. 69–77
  2. ↑ Spuler: Nurculuk. 1977, p. 1247.
  3. ↑ Atacan, Fulya: “A Kurdish Islamist Group in Modern Turkey: Shifting Identities” Middle East Studies 37.3 (2001) pp. 111-144.
  4. ^ Ahmet T. Kuru: Globalization and Diversification of Islamic Movements: Three Turkish Cases . In: Political Science Quarterly . 120, No. 2, 2005, pp. 253-274, p. 261.
  5. ↑ Ralph Ghadban : The pseudo-modernists Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen . In: Islam and Islam criticism, Berlin / Tübingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89930-360-5
  6. ↑ Bayram Balci: Fetullah Gülen's Missionary Schools
  7. ↑ Helen Rose Ebaugh: The Gülen Movement. An empirical study. Freiburg 2012, p. 50f.
  8. ↑ Turkey accuses popular Islamist plot against of state , The Guardian September 1, 2000
  9. ↑ Ahmet T. Kuru, Political Science Quarterly Volume 120 Number 2 2005, Globalization and Diversification of Islamic Movements: Three Turkish Cases ( Memento from June 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 139 kB)
  10. ^ "The friendly state in the Turkish state" , Der Standard , print edition, October 6, 2010. Retrieved October 16, 2012
  11. ↑ Jürgen Gottschlich: Gülen Movement in Turkey - The uncanny power of Iman Spiegel Online, April 5, 2011, accessed on June 12, 2011
  12. ↑ a b “Politics in the Name of Allah. Islamism - A Challenge for Europe ”, 2001, p. 73
  13. ↑ “Politics in the Name of Allah. Islamism - A Challenge for Europe ”, 2001, pp. 73–74
  14. ↑ http://www.erna-nur.com/