Reflections on Risale-i Nur

When people from different parts of Turkey came to Ustad Nursi and asked him to teach them, he would tell them not to come to him but to read the Risale-i Nur.

Thus, everybody can read the Risale-i Nur on their own and benefit from it. One does not need permission from a teacher who had already studied the Risale-i Nur with another teacher.

Nevertheless, we can think of some guidelines to follow in order to maximize our ability to benefit from the Risale-i Nur.

This episode, based on a similarly titled section on the reflections-RN.org website, offers some of these guidelines.

The Messenger of God Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Actions are according to intentions." In that case, the essential question to answer in thinking about reading the Risale-i Nur depends on the reader's intention.

This episode, based on a similarly titled section on the reflections-RN.org website, offers guidelines about what to intend in reading the Risale-i Nur.

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1878-1960 C.E., 1295-1379 Hijri) or Ustad Nursi, as his followers refer to him, was a great scholar, gnostic, and saint of the fourteenth century of the Islamic calendar. He struggled his entire life to understand, implement, teach, and uphold the message of the Qur’an and the Prophetic example. His unshakable certainty in the truths of faith provided a bastion of refuge and hope for Muslims in the late Ottoman Empire and republican Turkey at times of calamitous defeats and moral collapse that sealed the end of the Ottoman Caliphate. Today, the treasure of knowledge he left behind, the Risale-i Nur, continues to teach and inspire believers all around the world.

This episode is based on the brief introduction to Bediuzzaman Said Nursi's life and teachings as provided on the Reflections-rn.org website.

The Risale-i Nur is a Qur’anic commentary that makes substantial contributions to the Islamic tradition especially in the fields of dialectical theology (kalam) and Sufism (taṣawwuf) but also offers important insights about the methodologies (uṣūl) of the sciences of Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr) and prophetic traditions (ḥadīth).

This episode is based on the similarly titled "What is the Risale-i Nur" section on Reflections-RN.org under Introduction.

This introductory episode explains what Risale-i Nur is, why we read it, what our intentions should be, and what we should aim for when we read it.