Monograf Journal Edebiyat ve İktidar (2014 / 1) | Page 72

ODAK

72 • Emel Taştekin
are effective in “meaning making,” for example, “prestigious
religious leaders” or “spiritual pariahs” (Alexander 11). In my
analysis, I assume the presence of a collective authorship for
the Risale as a “carrier group.” Rather than going into detailed
search for authors, editors and translators of the collected text
or accounting the biography of Said Nursi Bediuzzaman—most
of the existing works on the Nur movement already do that—I
take the text itself as an agent of trauma construction through
its use of imagery and symbols. The figure of Nursi will only
be important as a Foucauldian subject who is embedded in and
influential on a network of discourses.

There are two main characteristics of the Risale that makes
it particularly suitable for the construction of a historical trauma
and in turn a collective identity. Enthusiasts of the text often
claim that it is beautifully rich in imagery, and that it also draws
attention to the beauty of the Qur’an itself. While this might be
true, a constructivist perspective suggested by cultural trauma
theory prompts us to see “beauty” as a social construction rather
than an intrinsic value. Besides this emphasis on the aesthetic
value, most of Risale’s devoted readership seems to value the
continuity and consistency of Nursi’s ideas, which lends itself
well to the concept of prophetic or circular narration as a cultural representation of trauma. Nursi’s official English translator and biographer Şükran Vahide comments that “despite the
apparent differences in conditions in Nursi’s lifestyle [referring

Secular Trauma and Religious Myth • 73

to his exile during the early years of the Republic], there are numerous points of similarity and continuity in his ideas” (Vahide
94). I will demonstrate how, in The Damascus Sermon, imagery
and metaphors are used to represent Western style secularism as
a trauma and how continuity and consistency is emphasized by
a circular and prophetic narration. However, I will first give a
brief background on the historical conditions and construction
of the audience that gave rise to a unique religious text as the
Risale.

Situation / Audience: Tanzimat, The Rise of

Nationalism, and the Genesis of Risale-i Nur

Fred A. Reed observes that “Turkey was—and remains—
the great laboratory of Westernization, and the epic battleground
of resistance to it,” and Risale doubtlessly constitutes a text that
bore witness to such a process (Abu-Rabi’ 34). Risale, which
was mainly responding to the Westernization process within the
borders of the Ottoman Empire, however, also bears witness to
the rise of phenomena such as European nationalism, anti-Imperialism, and global Islamic discourses, particularly, the ideology known as Pan-Islamism.

Şerif Mardin in his widely read study Religion and Social
Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1989) contextualizes Nursi’s thoughts and the subsequent
Nur movement in a matrix consisting of the internal social and
epistemological changes brought on by the rapid Tanzimat re-

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