Monograf Journal Edebiyat ve İktidar (2014 / 1) | Page 74
ODAK
74 • Emel Taştekin
forms and the international spread of nationalist ideologies originating from Europe. Mardin’s is probably the only study that
offers a Weberian, constructionist approach to the Nursi phenomenon similar to that of the cultural trauma theorists. First
of all, Mardin observes that the education reforms of the Tanzimat “changed the rules of practice of social relations” (111).
In other words, a central curriculum and text books, novels and
encyclopedia replaced the traditional “master-apprentice” model of education, in which literacy and knowledge of Islam were
disseminated largely through “rhyming dictionaries” and local
folklore. Mardin calls this traditional system “personalistic,”
where social status was based on personal relations rather than
certificates and qualifications. The chaos of the personalistic
system, Mardin notes, was more tolerant of difference than the
“procrustean systematization” introduced by the Tanzimat reformers, which brought on reactions particularly from the ulema
(Muslim scholars) who were faced with losing their social status (122). Nursi’s early involvement with Ottoman politics consisted of attempts to close the gaps between these two epistemological systems. For instance, in his early political campaigns
he suggests the reformation of the existing medreses according
to the modern sciences of the West instead of their complete
removal and replacement by rüşdiyes (the secular secondary
schools established by Tanzimant reformers). However, as Mardin observes, the Tanzimat reforms were still dependent on the
Secular Trauma and Religious Myth • 75
agents of the traditional system, simply because there were not
enough educators trained in the Western system. This hybrid
model was to be purified by the secular Turkish Republic in the
following decades, and any sign of the old system was entirely
removed from public life and bureaucracy. By then, Nursi had
turned away from politics and entered a phase that Nursi himself and his biographers call the “New Said,” roughly around
1921. Vahide when ob