Sometimes we find God sends among us some of His servants as a blessing. The mere presence of such servants suffices to instill peace and trust, opening a door of hope in our souls. They are guardians of heart who teach goodness by being the way they are. Thomas Michel was one of those guardians. He was a man of wisdom which he derived from the depths of the Christian tradition and a man of elegance that embodied the conscience of all humanity.

I extend my condolences and prayers of patience to his family, friends, those who had the opportunity to meet him, and especially to the volunteers of the Hizmet Movement who feel his loss deeply.

Condolences to us all.

Meeting Fr. Michel for the first time brought an immediate sense of comfort. He taught not by speaking, but by listening. He approached not by authority, but by understanding. This is how he earned a special place in the hearts of all who crossed paths with him.

“What humanity needs most today is a climate of love,” our teacher Fethullah Gülen said many, many times. Thomas Michel was nourished in such a climate, and he carried it with him across the world as one of its architects. Those who sat with him would recognize his state of acquiescence when he listened; his careful choice of words not to hurt anyone’s heart; his deep respect for those from different faith traditions – all of these were manifestations of his sincere connection to God.

In his latest message from Chiang Rai, Thailand, he taught us another lesson with the humblest of words: “Like Muslims, we Christians are not afraid of death because we know we are returning to the God who loves us.”

What a submission – simple yet truthful and touching. It was not words of farewell, but an expression of the inner peace that comes with walking toward God; a peace that gave voice not to the carnal soul, but to his loving heart.

In a spirit of fidelity, Fr. Michel wrote the following in the same message: “I appreciate and am grateful for the many wonderful people that God has allowed me to know in Hizmet.” This was also a crystal-clear testimony to the dialogue he pursued with us, the Hizmet community. He loved us, understood us, and welcomed us with a big embrace. We loved him back. We saw in him the purity of a servant of God seeking his Lord and the Lord’s good pleasure.

Our dear friend Thomas Michel left behind an indelible mark in the heart of the Hizmet community. That mark is not only from his academic research, books, and conferences, but the result of a smile, a compliment, or comforting a heart that were to last a lifetime. He did not only voice his support to interfaith dialogue but made it his natural state of being. His talks were not only informative but urged his audience to think over what it meant to be human.

We learned from his example that differences can lead not to conflict but richness, that diversions can transform not to polarizations but to bridges of love. Thomas Michel reminded us that the Truth spoke to every person with a different language, that what really mattered was to listen to that language with respect. Once, he said the following:

“Faith is when a person can feel the love he or she has for God in the hearts of others.” This love was the yeast that made him who he was.

While there is now a void left in his absence, there is also a legacy that must be upheld: to carry on the subtle and challenging journey of dialogue without interruption, and to continue that journey with love, respect, and a humble heart.

May God help us to carry forward what we have learned from him: kindness, calmness, and humane warmth.

Today, we are seeing off a real friend, a representative of the community of love, a true architect of dialogue. But we also know that every good seed that falls to the earth grows. The seeds Fr. Michel sowed will continue to grow.

May his spirit be blessed.

As the famous Sufi poet Jalal al-Din al-Rumi (d. 1273) once said, “Listen with ears of tolerance, see through eyes of compassion, speak with the language of love” [1]. It was Rumi’s mystical falling in love with God that animated his affective poetry. For many a modern-day observer, however, the connotations of such words as “religion” and “God” would seem divisive and sectarian beyond any hope. There are, however, two prominent theologians of our time who demonstrate that religion and inclusivism are not mutually exclusive: the Canadian philosopher and Catholic theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) and the Turkish Islamic intellectual Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1873-1960). The two have wielded, and still do, considerable influence upon their respective religious milieus, presenting original and yet faithful interpretations of their respective traditions that are sensitive to the intellectual and spiritual exigencies of modernity. The two showed that their interpretations of religious experience are conducive to peacemaking and interreligious dialogue.

During his lifetime, Nursi several times reached out to Christian leaders, the most important instances being sending his works to Pope Pius XII in 1950 and visiting the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in Istanbul in 1953 [2]. Further, despite constant state persecution and arbitrary imprisonments, Nursi’s whole life exemplified his innovative and yet deeply Islamic notion of a “spiritual” or “educational” jihad (jihad-i manawi), one that never resorts to violence and opposes not physical, but “spiritual” enemies: ignorance, poverty, and division. Fr. Thomas Michel, who worked in the Vatican as a Head of the Office for relations with Muslims from 1981 to 1994, states, “Along with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Said Nursi must be seen as one of the Twentieth Century’s great exponents of non-violent resistance” [3].

Lonergan, in turn, is an important Neo-Thomist thinker who was once presented on the cover of Time magazine as “one of the finest philosophic thinkers of the twentieth Century” [4]. He worked out a transcendental theory of intentional interiority that allows him to argue that dialogue is a must not only between empirical science and theology but also between different religions and diverse worldviews. This article will demonstrate how the two thinkers base their idea of interreligious dialogue on their interpretations of the inward dimension of their religious traditions as an “infatuation with beauty” and a “falling in love,” as well as analysing how their interpretations can foster interfaith dialogue.

Nursi’s philosophy of interreligious dialogue

The value that Nursi places on accepting and understanding the culturally “Other” can be better portrayed if we attend to his epistemology. Nursi incessantly underscores that all his treatises (generically called the Risale-i Nur [Epistles of Light]) are inspired by the Qur’an: he almost always cites a verse of the Qur’an at the beginning of key passages and provides, through what follows, an exegesis of the verse [5]. His interpretation of the Qur’an, in turn, insistently reverts his reader’s attention to the observed data of the sensible world in order to reveal how the created entities point beyond themselves to the divine “Wholly Other” – so much so that, for Nursi, the entire universe might be seen as a materialized form of the Qur’an [6]. This radiant inward dimension of being is called Malakutiyyah (“Intellective Realm”), whereas the outward dimension of the physical world, Mulkiyyah (“Material Realm”). Malakutiyyah discloses itself to anyone who personally reflects and deliberates (tafakkar) on the design of the world after the model provided by Nursi’s exegesis and with the intention of “finding” God in everything. Nursi allegorically assimilates this “Intellective Realm” to the transparent frontside of the mirror. Even if very different forms – some apparently ugly and some apparently beautiful – “intrude” on the Mulkiyyah side of the “mirror,” its “Intellective” aspect always remains transparent and beautiful, as it looks to the Creator of all beings [7]. On the Malakutiyyah level, all individual entities of the world – humanity first and foremost – constantly and ubiquitously partake of divine holiness thanks to their being loci of Allah’s reflected “Superb Names” (al-Asma’ al-Husna) mentioned in the Qur’an. Even if God’s essence (Zhatullah) is ineffable, the divine names’ observable activity in the world displays divine artistry for anyone willing to intend God through his or her reflective thought. Such a thought will show that, for instance, philosophy is based on the Superb Name Hakim (All-Wise), medicine on the Name Shafi (Healer), and geometry on the Name Muqaddir (Determiner), and so on. The same goes for human perfections and all levels of human virtues – they are founded on the Superb Names [8].

It is this inward “Qur’anic” outlook that allows Nursi to perceive everything in the world as intelligible and dialogic in the sense that all created entities – different as they might be in appearance – are essentially beautiful divine “mirrors” telling something about God and requiring that their observers appreciate them: “Beauty and fairness desire to see and be seen. Both require the existence of yearning witnesses and bewildered admirers” [9]. This yearning and this admiration show all things as inwardly lovable and allows Nursi to say, “Love is the cause of the universe’s existence and is what binds it; and it is both the light of the universe and its life. Since man is the most comprehensive fruit of the universe, a love that will conquer the universe has been included in his heart, the seed of that fruit” [10].

Of course, Nursi’s constant focus on his “Qur’anic lenses” might invoke – in some people’s minds – a sense of absolutism and inability to learn from the culturally Other. To ward off such a possibility, Nursi bases his idea of beings as “mirrors of God” on two aspects. First, in the same way as the darkness serves as a foil for the beauty of light to manifest, the impotence of human beings – their weaknesses, shortcomings, and mistakes – serve as a foil for the power of the All-Powerful, All-Subsistent and Perfect One to manifest His Names all the more intensively. So, Nursi warns that the believer is to use the reflective thought to see how the Superb Names self-manifest through things and through his or her own being, not in things or in his or her being, lest he or she come to deify or absolutize his or her personality, culture, or nationality [11]. Secondly, human beings are only mirrors to the Names, not the authentic possessors thereof [12]. (That is to say, humans, thanks to their self-awareness and if they are not self-conceited, are able to compare their activity/attributes with those of the Transcendent and come to appreciate the latter’s awe-inspiring beauty, i.e. come to know God. Someone who has built a physical house and self-identifies as a “builder,” for instance, can profoundly admire the One who has built the magnificent Universe.) Our “mirror-like” nature, however, manifests the Superb Names only in an incomplete manner; for Nursi, we “possess” them in a metaphorical, partial, and temporary manner. This, in turn, means that our “mirror-like” natures are inherently open to learn from the manifestations of the Superb Names within other cultures and religions.

This being the case, for Nursi, no animosity can make serious inroads in the minds of those who can contemplate the Real in this vein. Even if someone does not accept the Real as such, this “someone” remains His mirror, epiphany, and masterpiece, which means that he or she is to be ontologically appreciated, not violated against. However, in Nursi’s view, one is able to realize this sense of appreciation of the world only if one purifies one’s sense of self – which he calls “I-ness” (anā) – from any egocentrism. If anā looks at one’s selfhood with an attitude that is self-indicative rather than God-indicative, the entirety of the reflections of the Names come to be attributed to the human person’s ego, thereby giving rise to spiritual ignorance and intolerance [13].

Lonergan’s philosophy of interreligious dialogue

The very heart of Lonergan’s take on interreligious dialogue rests in what he calls “GEM” (“Generalized Empirical Method”): it provides a basis not only for any interdisciplinary cooperation, but for interreligious dialogue as well. It presupposes that, at least theoretically, the disinterested desire to know and wonder – which is pertinent to all humans as long as they are humans and not only scientists, historians of religion, or theologians – drives all humans to be attentive to data, intelligent in understanding, reasonable in judgments, and responsible in decisions [14]. Lonergan’s system proposes that the very structure of the interlocutors’ intentional consciousness leads them to seek what is authentic and true in the ways of the religious Other and to anticipate the possibility of “integrated understanding” between various religious traditions. Further, the interlocutors should see any differences, obvious as they are at first glance, as “genetic,” i.e., reconcilable, rather than “dialectic,” i.e., irreconcilable. Any point-blank refusal of the interlocutors to see the existence of at least some important similarities with the Other, signals, for Lonergan, an unauthenticity of their own thinking due to its affliction with one or several biases [15]. That is, the powerful drive of the interlocutors’ disinterested desire to wonder in an unrestricted manner might be frustrated by one or several of the following four biases. The first one is dramatic bias, that is, the existence of psychic aberrations or underdevelopment within the interlocutors caused by their “psychic wounds.” The second one is egoistic bias, i.e., one’s self-centeredness that refuses to allow for even a minimal degree of self-abnegation necessary to consider the common good. The third one is collective bias that “favors what is best for the group at the expense of others outside the group.” The fourth one is general bias that disregards questions that do not seem to be of immediate practical importance [16].

Further, Lonergan asserts that, if one self-transcends by remaining not only attentive, not only intelligent, not only reasonable, but also responsible (he calls these levels of intentionality as the “four transcendentals”), one comes to be well-positioned to reach the fullness of one’s ontological, axiological, and epistemological horizons by mystically falling “in love with God” in an immediate and unrestricted manner [17]. This love operates within the parameters of one’s intentional interiority, and yet it comes as a free gift of God’s grace that brings about the most genuine state of one’s relation to God, namely a “dynamic state of being in love in an unrestricted manner” [18]. This unmediated experience of God’s love is transcultural as far as its inner nature goes; from the standpoint of different cultural contexts and historical periods, it is mediated differently through different religious and cultural expressions, practices, and traditions [19]. Lonergan calls this experience as the “infrastructure” or “inner word” which ensues upon the Holy Spirit “flooding one’s heart,” and it becomes a hermeneutical toolkit for one’s authentic response to the challenges of interreligious dialogue [20].

Even if this mystical state of “being-in-love” is transcultural, for Lonergan, the Christian claim that religion is being in love with God in an unrestricted manner, renders Christianity unique. Lonergan insists that the “outer word” of the Christian tradition is more than just a religious experience objectified: it was given as revelation, coming from Jesus Christ [21]. That is, for Lonergan, “infrastructure” that informs the very spirit of religious faith, presupposes its mediation and objectification vis-à-vis the world through the “superstructure” of language and beliefs, meanings and values, scripture and sacraments, and community and culture. For him, however, Christian doctrine is this “superstructure” par excellence, and its unique appropriateness cannot be transcended by any universal mystical experience [22]. In other words, for Lonergan, the authoritativeness and structure of this outer word is such that it can be conceived as the most direct mediation of immediacy and becomes, if properly appropriated, “second immediacy” [23].

Differences-in-Similarities

As follows from the abovementioned, the positions of the two thinkers can be broadly identified as “inclusivism.” While they acknowledge that God’s salvific activity can unfold everywhere in the world in an overt or covert manner, they make it clear that, wherever it unfolds, it does so as either the ubiquitous operation of the Qur’anic “Superb Names” (Nursi) or the Christian notion of “love of God flooding our hearts” (Lonergan). Both seem to have realized that most people are never totally detached from their tradition and that any God-talk is bound to be “confessional” – but not necessarily “confessionalist.” Naturally, one starts interreligious dialogue based on the minimal “non-negotiable,” premises of one’s religion.

At first glance, Lonergan’s clear distinction between the “inner word” as pertaining to the “unmediated experience of the mystery of love” and the “outer word” as this love’s mediated expression, allows him to see a somewhat deeper unity behind the differences. For him, the gift of God’s love justifies dialogue with “all Christians, with non-Christians, and even with atheists who may love God in their hearts while not knowing him with their heads” [24]. For Nursi, in contrast, aggressive atheism is evil to be wrestled with by the “Qur’anic sword of persuasion”; it is irreconcilable with genuine civilization. Indeed, he sees an atheistic civilization a contradiction in terms, for genuine civilization is possible only if humans recognize the transcendent meaning of their lives and thus gain in virtue [25].

Yet, the importance of the mystical love of God as the inner telos behind all events is the common point in which the dialectics of their difference might be resolved. Nursi’s overall accent on one’s affective appreciation of the beauty of the world as reflective of the divine beauty, allows one to contextualize his apparently incoherent lack of charity toward atheistically minded people. It might hark back to such facts as his identification of the penetration of atheistic assertions and materialistic ideologies as the root problem facing the Muslim world at the start of the 20^th century or his lack of travel to Europe at the time of peace (he spent 2 years in Russia but only as a prisoner-of-war) [26]. The inner structure of Nursi’s theology makes it incumbent upon his followers – under normal social and political conditions – to pursue meaningful dialogue even with non-religious or atheistic people. Another possibility to reconcile Nursi’s position with that of Lonergan’s is to address the meaning of the word “atheism.” If it denotes, as John Paul II said, “not knowing the true nature of created reality but absolutizing it, and therefore ‘idolizing’ it,” [27] then Lonergan’s discourse on biases would rather concur with Nursi’s strictures on atheism.

Conclusion

As Ian Markham, a Nursi scholar and Episcopal priest says, in order for any interfaith encounter to be meaningful, one has to know, understand, and love one’s own tradition, for one will “find it easy to recognize in others the same depth of commitment and affection” [28]. Indeed, two music enthusiasts (say, one involved in jazz, the other in choral) “can relate much more effectively to each other than with the musical amateur who cannot read music” [29]. One’s discovery of the common “inner dimensions” within different faith-traditions, is greatly facilitated when one first fathoms the profundity of one’s own one. Nursi and Lonergan are deeply in love with their traditions and yet contemplate, through the inner mystical dimensions of their traditions, the beauty of other ways. Even if the “inner dimensions” of the two religions are remarkably transparent and transcultural, there should be some place that can determine the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of insights emerging from one’s encounter with the Other. There is an inward spirit behind any outward form; in order to penetrate to the spirit, however, one first needs the form. One can argue that it is this aspect of both thinkers’ ideas that makes them so appealing to their respective religious milieus today. If Ian Markham says that Nursi’s “Qur’anic” approach could, in principle, be “affirmed by any traditional Muslim,”[30] arguably the same statement can be made about Lonergan, too: his “inner word” can be seen as nothing but a harmonious development of the current position of Catholic church regarding the “seeds of the Word” present and active in different religions.

References

1. Mahmoud Masaeli and Rico Sneller, “Introduction,” in Responses of Mysticism to Religious Terrorism: Sufism and Beyond, ed. Mahmoud Masaeli & Rico Sneller (Oud-Turnhout: Gompel&Svacina, 2020), 8.
2. Thomas Michel, “Muslim-Christian Dialogue and Cooperation in the Thought of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi,” in Said Nursi’s Views on Muslim-Christian Understanding, ed. Shukran Vahide (Istanbul: Soz Basim Yayin, 2005), 36.
3. Thomas Michel, “Dialogue of Ideas between the Thought of Pope John Paul II and the Risale-I Nur,” in Globalization, Ethics, and Islam, ed. Ian Markham and Ibrahim Ozdemir, (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 44.
4. Gerard Whelan, “The Continuing Significance of Bernard Lonergan,” Thinking Faith, https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20080923_1.htm (accessed August 24, 2021).
5. Ian Markham, An Introduction to Said Nursi: Life, Thought and Writings (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), 18.
6. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Sualar [Rays], (Istanbul: Soz Basim Yayin, 2003), 200.
7. Said Nursi, Signs of Miraculousness (Istanbul: Sozler Publications, 2004), 72, in Colin Turner, The Qur’an Revealed: A Critical Analysis of Said Nursi’s Epistles of Light (Berlin: GerlachPress, 2013), 91.
8. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Words: On the Nature and Purposes of Man, Life, and All Things, trans. Sukran Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Publications, 2008), 655.
9. Nursi, Words, 80.
10. Nursi, Words, 367.
11. Farid al-Ansari, Miftāḥ al-Nūr fī Mafāhīm Rasā’il al-Nūr (Miknas: Jami‘at al-Sulṭān al-Mawlā Ismā‘īl, Kindle Edition), 117-118.
12. Al-Ansari, Miftāḥ, 115.
13. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Al-Mathnawi Al-Nuri: Seedbed of the Light, trans. Huseyin Akarsu (New Jercey: Light, 2007), 376.
14. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, ed. Robert M. Doran and John D. Dadosky (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 101-2.
15. John Dadosky, The Structure of Religious Knowing: Encountering the Sacred in Eliade and Lonergan (New York: State University of New York Press, 2004), 35, 38.
16. Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, 214-5, 242-253.
17. Lonergan, 2017, 105.
18. Dadosky, 2004, 30.
19. Joseph Flanagan, “Lonergan’s New Context for Theology,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 63, (2007), 211 (193-215).
20. Dadosky, 2004, 32.
21. Ibid.
22. William Johnston, The Inner Eye of Love (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., 1978), 65, in Nancy C. Ring, Doctrine within the Dialectic of Subjectivity and Objectivity: A Critical Study of the Positions of Paul Tillich and Bernard Lonergan, (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1991), 145-6. Dadosky, 144.
23. Ring, 1991, 147.
24. Lonergan, 2017, 261.
25. Markham, “Secular or Religious Foundations,” in Globalization, Ethics, and Islam, ed. Ian Markham and Ibrahim Ozdemir, (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 72.
26. Patrice C. Brodeur, “The Ethics of Dediuzzaman Said Nursi’s Dialogue with the West in Light of His Concept of ‘Europe,’” in Globalization, Ethics, and Islam, 89.
27. John Paul II, “General Audience,” Vatican.Va, Wednesday 14 April 1999, accessed Dec. 9, 2021, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_14041999.html
28. Markham, Ian. Engaging with Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. New York: Routledge, 2016. p. 138.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid. p. 63.

“Sincerity” in the Islamic Tradition

Ikhlas is a Qur’anic concept that is variously translated as “sincerity” or “purity of intention,” and Gülen’s understanding of this term covers both aspects of the Qur’anic concept. In ordinary parlance, “sincerity” indicates the notion of honesty or freedom from dissimulation and hypocrisy. A sincere person is one whose external words or deeds are in accord with their interior thoughts or feelings. A sincere person does not pretend to be expressing one thought or emotion while in reality his interior dispositions are to the contrary. Thus, a sincere person is not self-promoting, hypocritical, pretentious, two-faced, or devious. The sincere person neither flatters nor manipulates others. This straightforward transparency of speech and motivation is one aspect of ikhlas.

The second aspect of the Qur’anic notion of ikhlas, which brings together the notion of “purity” with that of “dedicating, devoting or consecrating oneself” to some activity, is a key virtue in Islamic practice [1], and is the aspect of ikhlas most often stressed by Gülen. Ikhlas is an eminently interior disposition by which the faithful Muslim performs all external actions in a spirit of service and directed solely toward pleasing the Divine Lord. In fact, in Islam the perfection of one’s witness to faith can be gauged by the double standard of ikhlas (purity of intention) and ihsan (goodness).

It is noteworthy that the brief expression of the Islamic creed found in the Qur’anic Sura 112, “Say: He, Allah, is One. Allah is He on Whom all depend. He begets not, nor is He begotten. And there is none like Him,” has been known in Islamic tradition as the “Surat al-Ikhlas,” that is, “The Chapter of Sincerity” or “The Chapter of Pure Religion.”

The importance of ikhlas has been commented upon down through the centuries by Muslim scholars, exegetes, and spiritual guides in every generation. The Sufi masters have been particularly fond of elaborating on this virtue, to the extent that in the minds of many Muslims, ikhlas is considered a “Sufi concept.” In commenting on ikhlas, Said Nursi distinguishes his own advice from that of the teaching of the Sufi tradition. While praising the insights of the Sufi masters, Nursi notes that “I am not a Sufi, but these principles of theirs make a good rule for our path” [2].

Because of its roots in the Qur’an and in the tradition of Islamic spiritual writing, this aspect of ikhlas can perhaps be more adequately conveyed in English by “purity of intention” or “pure religion” than simply by “sincerity.” Ikhlas indicates the interior disposition in which one practices all the acts of religion solely for God’s pleasure rather than for any personal benefit that may accrue to them, whether that be prestige, pride, or the admiration of others. When one “worships God with sincerity” one’s intention is pure and undefiled by base or irrelevant motives. The Qur’an commends those who devote their lives to seeking God’s pleasure: “And there is the type of man who gives his life to earn the pleasure of Allah: And Allah is full of kindness to (His) devotees” (Qur’an 2: 207).

Ikhlas in Gülen’s theology

In his treatment of ikhlas, Gülen builds upon what was elaborated in the tradition and applies these insights to the contemporary needs of communitarian life and the broader society. ¨While interpreting the basic meaning of the term to be “upright, sincere, and pure,” Gülen indicates that ikhlas means “pursuing nothing worldly while worshiping and obeying God” [3]. At the deepest level, sincerity can only be understood in the mystery of the relationship between God and God’s faithful servant. Purity of intention is a grace or divine gift that God places in the heart of those He loves [4] in order to increase, deepen and give eternal value to the servant’s ordinary good acts.

Gülen considers purity of intention to be “the wing of the bird” of a person’s life before God. The other wing is faithfulness, and together these virtues make up the two wings of divine grace that God implants in the soul that enable a person to approach God directly without hindrance. He quotes Mevlana Jalal al-din Rumi to the effect that if good deeds were a body, purity of intention (ikhlas) would be their soul. That is, it is sincerity that makes good deeds live, be effective, and have everlasting value. Without sincerity to animate deeds spiritually, all human endeavors would remain lifeless, ephemeral, and ultimately worthless. But those who fly with the two wings of sincerity and faithfulness will fly with God’s protection and will unfailingly reach their destination, that is, “God’s approval and pleasure.”

Faithfulness, the other wing of the bird, enables God’s servant to stick to his intention to serve God even when it is inconvenient or seemingly fruitless. This kind of loyalty to God is one of the most evident qualities of God’s servants, an outstanding characteristic of all the prophets, and the source of wisdom in the believer. In the loyal, faithful servant, God will plant the seeds of wisdom that will then spring from that person’s heart and tongue.

Gülen quotes Abu Yazid Bistami (Bayazid) to say that it is through sincerity, not through human deeds, that a person goes to God. It is on the basis of a person’s sincerity that God judges acts, not on the magnitude or notoriety of the deed. The size and quantity of good deeds is unimportant. Even a small deed or one that is unknown to others, if it is done with sincerity, is judged pleasing by God. This intentionality, the conviction that a person’s intention determines the value of a deed, is in keeping with the Islamic tradition. Gülen notes that God rewards a small act done with purity of intention more highly than many more ostentatious deeds done without the sincere desire to serve God alone.

For Gülen, Muslims must learn purity of intention from the prophets, particularly from the Prophet Muhammad. He states: “God’s Messenger had one intention: to please God and worship Him sincerely, as he himself stated in a famous hadith: “Perfect goodness or virtue is to worship God as if you were seeing Him, and although you do not see Him, yet truly He sees you” [5]. Just as the prophets could not take a step without sincerity, so also those who follow in the footsteps of the prophets will not be able to do anything without a pure intention. Gülen describes this purity of intention as “the pursuit of no worldly purpose in one’s relationship with God [6]. In other words, worshiping and obeying God are the only valid reasons that a sincere person should have for performing any of their good actions.

Living with purity of intention

Like Said Nursi before him, Fethullah Gülen is not interested so much in being a theoretician of the spiritual life as in offering concrete, practical advice to those who come to him for spiritual counsel. It is in this way that Gülen, following Nursi, distinguishes himself from the great Sufi Masters like Al-Muhasibi, Al-Ghazali, and Hujwiri. Gülen is interested in continuing in the line of Nursi’s “path of reality,” that of providing effective, helpful advice to Muslims who are seeking God’s pleasure in this world. He cites Nursi to insist that purity of intention is nothing other than the basic motivation for the disciple’s personal and communitarian actions: “We worship God only because we are His servants and He has told us to do so. Said Nursi said: ‘Do what you do only for God’s sake; start for God’s sake, work for God’s sake, and act within the sphere of God’s good approval’” [7].

Gülen advises his students to maintain spiritual discretion. In practical terms, if ikhlas, or purity of intention, means that the servant does everything solely to seek God’s pleasure and for no worldly motive whatsoever, it follows that sincere believers should not be ostentatious in the good deeds they perform. One seeking God’s pleasure alone should hide any supererogatory acts from the view of others and remain silent about any edifying personal experiences, special treatment received from superiors, or special gifts with which one has been endowed by God.

The underlying supposition is that there is a universal human tendency to perform one’s good deeds in order to be seen by others and gain their approval. Moreover, human motivation is often complex, with the desire to serve God mixed with a craving for human admiration and approval. The sincere servant recognizes that it is only God’s approval, not that of other persons, that matters; thus, it is unimportant whether or not one is seen in serving God. A person who has purity of intention worries neither about being praised for his accomplishments nor censured for his failures. He does not care if others are aware or unaware of his achievements, nor is he preoccupied about receiving a reward. Such a person behaves with consistency, whether or not one is in public or in private.

According to Gülen, sincerity teaches that the true goal of acts of piety and goodness is God’s pleasure, not human recognition or respect. Moreover, in sincere worship the believer discovers that one’s human longing for Paradise is not a sufficient motivation for doing what is right. Speaking of worship, Gülen explains: “Those performing [acts of worship] can be categorized by their intention, resolution, determination, and sincerity as follows: those who desire to enter Paradise, those who hope to be rescued from Hellfire, those who love and stand in awe of God, and those who feel that they must do so as a requirement of their relationship between God as the Creator and human beings” [8]. The sincere worshiper no longer cares whether his deeds will form the basis for attaining Paradise.

In fact, sincerity should become second nature to God’s servants, not a virtue after which a person consciously needs to strive. Gülen advises disciples to be “so involved in worship or religious deeds in seeking God’s pleasure that one does not even remember whether one should be sincere or not” [9]. In other words, even the virtue of sincerity itself must not be allowed to become the final goal of religious observance. The only true objective in the performance of any good act is to serve and obey God and to thereby give God the pleasure and satisfaction that is due Him.

Only a humble person can act with true sincerity. As Gülen explains: “Humble people do not attribute fruits of work and efforts to themselves, nor do they regard their successes or efforts for God as making them superior to others. They do not care how others regard them; they do not demand a return for their services for God. They regard their being loved by others as a test of their sincerity, and do not exploit God’s favors to them by boasting” [10].

To arrive at a state of mind where one does not care whether one receives recognition for one’s good deeds, the disciple must engage in self-examination and self-supervision. Only the person who has learned to be honest with oneself will be able to know whether one’s motivation is solely to worship God or whether the true incentive that is being pursued is some worldly gain, such as self-satisfaction, human respect, or personal ambition. Thus, developing a habit of honest evaluation and reflection will enable a person to grow in purity of intention. Gülen calls this muraqaba (self-supervision), by which God’s servants are led “to maintain the purity of thoughts, actions, and intentions even when they are alone, in the consciousness of His continual observation” [11].

Communitarian dimensions of ikhlas

It is not only for the purposes of an individual’s spiritual growth that purity of intention is a key virtue among those who seek to do God’s will. Purity of intention also has communitarian effects. There is nothing that can more quickly disrupt the proper bonds of friendship among disciples than personal ambition, competition, and rivalry. When a disciple is in the habit of calling attention to his superior abilities or achievements in one or another area, or to boast about his relationship to his superiors, resentment and jealousy will inevitably arise among his confreres.

In his emphasis on sincerity as a key element in preserving the unity of the community, Gülen’s approach is very similar to that of Said Nursi, who repeatedly wrote of the necessity for sincerity to prevent disunity among the students of the Risale-i Nur. The history of many religious groups in various religions has shown repeatedly that jealousy and a sense of competition among members has been the cause of factionalism, resentment, and divisions into rival groups. It has produced a loss of dynamism and resulted in the break-up of many groups. It is only by the members carrying out their tasks with sincerity that this unhealthy rivalry can be avoided. In his long discursus on sincerity, Nursi envisioned a community in which “Each of the members completes the deficiencies of the others, veils their faults, assists their needs, and helps them out in their duties” [12]. If this type of relationship among fellow disciples is to be possible and the unity of the community is to be maintained, everyone must be sincerely striving solely to please God.

By contrast, the unity of heart and intention among those involved in the Hizmet cemaat can be traced in a large part to this emphasis on sincerity and purity of intention. It means that humble tasks – meeting guests at the airport, serving tea or coffee, feeding the poor in soup kitchens – have eternal value and ennoble the one performing them, if they are done wholly for the pleasure of God. A similar understanding underlies the readiness of intelligent, well-prepared university graduates to renounce prestigious and well-paying positions in academics or business to devote their lives to teaching students in distant and often impoverished regions. The emphasis on purity of intention has convinced industrialists, businessmen, and entrepreneurs to contribute generously to projects whose completion they will never see.

Since it is sincerity that enables God’s servants to keep focused on serving God alone, thus making their actions, great or small, acceptable to God, if Gülen has been able to instill a sense of harmony and united service (hizmet) among his followers, it is largely because of the emphasis he has put on ikhlas. He cites Mevlana to this effect: “You should be sincere in all your deeds, So that the Majestic Lord may accept them. Sincerity is the wing of the bird of the acts of obedience; without a wing, how can you fly to the abode of prosperity?” [13]

Notes

1. L. Gardet, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Leiden: 2006, III: 1059.
2. Risale-i Nur, The Twenty-first Flash, p. 216
3. Gülen, Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism, 1999, p. 60.
4. Ibid. p. 62.
5. Gülen, Muhammad the Messenger of God, p. 39.
6. Gülen, Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism, p. 60.
7. Gülen, Muhammad the Messenger of God, p. 38. Gülen’s citation of the Risale-i Nur is taken from “The First Word,” p. 5.
8. Fethullah Gülen, Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance, Somerset: The Light, 2004, p. 54.
9. M.F. Gülen, Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism, 1999, p. 62.
10. M. F. Gülen, Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance, p. 80.
11. Gülen, Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism, p. 57.
12. Said Nursi, Risale-i Nur, The Twenty-first Flash, p. 214.
13. Jalal al-Din Rumi, cited by M.F. Gülen, Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism, I: 62.

About seven years before that, in May 2009, I received an award at the International Turkish Olympiad. The festival was essentially a cultural event consisting of Turkish songs, dances, and poetry recitals performed by students from Turkish schools around the world. It took place in a modern convention hall in Ankara with thousands of spectators in attendance. The event was sponsored and organized by members of the Hizmet movement, a Muslim community inspired by the preaching and writings of Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen. When I, together with a handful of other recipients, mounted the stage to accept our awards, there to shake our hands was the smiling Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The incident underlines how less than a decade earlier relations between Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (known by its acronym, the AKP) and the Hizmet movement guided by Gülen’s teaching were characterized by cooperation and respect. Foreign observers in Ankara even referred to Hizmet as “the religious wing of the AKP.” Although inaccurate even in those days, such a characterization reflected a commonly held view among Turks and others that there was some kind of ideological link between the AKP and the followers of Gülen.

There is no doubt that the Gülen supporters had great influence in Turkey. They ran the best high schools and college prep institutions, and students from those schools, year after year, obtained the top scores in the standardized college entrance exams. Hizmet members published Zaman, the most widely circulated and highly regarded newspaper in Turkey, referred to by Erdoğan himself as “the guardian of democracy in Turkey.” Hizmet members published scores of professional journals and popular magazines. They established associations of medical professionals, teachers, and business leaders. They set up hospitals and clinics, and in Turkey’s highly polarized society they conducted national “dialogues” that brought together Turkish thinkers and leaders: Right and Left, Sunni and Alevi, Turk and Kurd, and Muslim, Jewish, and Christian.

However, storm clouds were gathering. Perceptive observers could see trouble ahead. In a prophetic column in the left-center Hurriyet newspaper on October 5, 2010, the late political commentator Mehmet Ali Birand noted:

“I don’t know whether they are aware of it, but a danger that needs to be taken very seriously awaits the Gülen movement. In the eyes of Turkish society, which believes conspiracy theories, the Gülen movement is mythicized beyond its real dimensions. The power and influence of the Gülen movement is being so exaggerated that if no precautions are taken, this imagined power will one day destroy it… If the current trend does not change, future politicians will go after this movement with a view to annihilating it.”

Birand, who claimed to be neither a member of Hizmet nor opposed to it, believed that, “The power attributed to the Gülen movement is enormously exaggerated. It does not reflect the truth but the winds of exaggeration…”

The first overt sign of tension between Gülen, who lives in retirement in the United States, and Erdoğan can be dated to the pro-democracy Gezi Park protests of June, 2013, when Gülen criticized the Turkish government’s heavy-handed suppression of the protests. The real break came later that year when investigators reportedly associated with Hizmet pursued charges of corruption leveled against the sons of various ministers of the Turkish government, implicating Erdoğan’s own son. Since then, Erdoğan (President of the Republic since 2014) has sought to destroy Hizmet and break its influence on Turkish society. After last summer’s failed coup, Erdoğan has accused Gülen of masterminding the coup and his followers of carrying it out. The government has undertaken a “McCarthyite” witch-hunt, resulting in the dismissal and arrest of university presidents, police chiefs, military officers, and newspaper editors, and the imprisonment of an estimated 60,000 Turkish citizens.

Erdoğan’s anti-Hizmet campaign has even affected U.S.-Turkish relations. The Turkish government has demanded Gülen’s extradition to Turkey, while Secretary of State under President Obama, John Kerry, noted that the United States does not extradite residents on the basis of unsubstantiated requests, even those made by Heads of State. He noted that the process of extradition must begin with the presentation of hard evidence of wrongdoing and that no evidence of the involvement of Gülen or Hizmet associates in the failed coup attempt has been forthcoming.

Unsatisfied with the Obama administration’s refusal to bow under pressure, the Turkish government looked to the future: they discussed, with retired US Army General Michael Flynn, ways that judicial processes might be bypassed in order that Mr. Gülen might be “removed” from the United States and sent to Turkey. The fact that such actions could violate U.S. laws does not seem to have been a deterrent either to Flynn or to the Turkish authorities concerned. Flynn was at the time an advisor to presidential candidate Donald Trump, and he later briefly served as National Security Advisor to President Trump before being fired for lying about his relations with Russian officials. It is evident that the Turkish government was willing to engage in underhanded and apparently illegal activities to get Gülen extradited from the United States.

Guilty or not guilty?

For those who know Mr. Gülen personally or have had contact with the open-hearted and idealistic members of the Hizmet movement, claims of subversive “terrorism,” (in Erdoğan’s words) seem incongruous. I have known Mr. Gülen for over 20 years and find the retired, soft-spoken Qur’an-teacher to be preaching and living a particularly attractive interpretation of Islamic faith. His bedrock concept is that of ikhlas, which means doing everything, no matter how modest or unassuming, wholly for God’s pleasure. This spiritual principle, which is hardly original or unique to Islam, has motivated Gülen’s followers to commit themselves to administering and teaching in schools in places as diverse as Phnom Penh, Brussels, Accra, and inner-city Milwaukee and Cleveland. They are digging wells in Somalia and Mali, running clinics in Kenya, and establishing interreligious dialogue programs in more than 200 locations in the United States.

Many Americans have come to know the Hizmet movement personally through the well-organized cultural trips to Turkey sponsored by these local dialogue associations. For many non-Muslims, the trips are their first direct encounter with an Islamic community devoted to peacebuilding and being a living expression of God’s compassion and mercy.

I greatly admire these Hizmet members, of whom I know hundreds, and many of whom I count among my personal friends. I have been to their annual retreats, where they encourage one another to live up to their lofty Islamic ideals. I have heard the testimony of Catholic leaders in Turkey and Turkish Jews that the Gülen followers are their partners and allies in striving to build a truly inclusive Turkish society. I have talked to Christian students from Mozambique and the Philippines, graduates of Hizmet schools, who are grateful for the excellent educational foundation they received. Could all this good work simply be public posturing, a façade to hide a conspiracy aimed at achieving domination and power? I suppose that it’s possible, but it seems pretty far-fetched and unlikely.

One might say that an outside observer’s positive opinion of the Hizmet movement begs the question of whether members of the movement, with Fethullah Gülen as mastermind, were in fact behind the July 2016 coup. Despite all his bluster, threats, and posturing, Erdoğan has not been able to produce any credible evidence linking the coup attempt to a Hizmet plot. The most he has been able to offer are a few statements by implicated generals, obtained under duress, which could be interpreted as suggesting a tenuous link with Gülen. For his part, Mr. Gülen has categorically denied any involvement in the coup, which he condemned, and called for an international impartial investigation into the coup and its background, a suggestion which Mr. Erdoğan has summarily rejected.   One must ask which of the two would like to see the truth come out, and which is trying to keep the facts from coming to light.        

I originally published a version of this article in Commonweal magazine in November 2016. Since then, Mr. Erdoğan has continued to make unsubstantiated claims about Hizmet involvement in the coup. He is not talking about the possible sympathy of one or another military officer toward Fethullah Gülen, but a centralized, organized effort conceived and directed by Gülen and carried out through the institutions and networking of Hizmet members. This scenario has been investigated with the professional expertise of the intelligence services of the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and NATO, who have clearly expressed their views of who they believe to have been behind the coup. None of them has been convinced by Erdoğan’s noisy but empty accusations.

I am not alone in asking Mr. Erdoğan, “Please produce evidence, if you have any, for your claims. Otherwise, why should anyone take your word for what appears to be a slander of this conscientious religious leader and a community that is doing much good in the world? Could your anti-Hizmet campaign be an act of revenge for the whistle-blowing against your family members, or a distraction aimed at preventing a continuing investigation of the corruption charges?”

With his new book, Insights from the Risale-i Nur, Thomas Michel sets out to answer some of these questions. Michel states his goal very early in the book: as a Jesuit priest, he wants to know where, if at all, he can find “points of convergence” between Christianity and Islam within Bediüzzaman Said Nursi’s (d. 1960) seminal “Risale-i Nur.”

It turns out there aren’t just a few points, but many. And throughout Michel’s book – which is a collection of essays, speeches, and presentations the priest has delivered over the last two decades – he lays the groundwork for a healthy, constructive dialogue between not just Christians and Muslims, but peoples of all faith.

Nursi wrote the “Risale-i Nur” in the wake of two world wars. He’d watched as the secular advances of Western civilization had led to the near total destruction of Europe – not once, but twice. The collateral damage had deeply affected his home, Turkey, and its neighbors. And he endured the ill effects of Turkey’s own modernization efforts, as he was repeatedly persecuted and imprisoned for his faith.

Under such circumstances, it would have been understandable if his book had been rife with anger. Instead, as Michel astutely shows throughout his own thoughtful book, Nursi’s commentary is remarkably hopeful. He sought these “points of convergence” while also stressing what he believed as the truth of his own faith. Michel adeptly uses Nursi’s words to draw out the common ground between different faiths, and looks at how these similarities can be applied in our equally fraught contemporary age.

Both Christianity and Islam pinpoint the destruction wrought by war and poverty as having germinated not from faith, but from rampant materialism run to its natural conclusion. In a quote that Michel returns to, time and again, Nursi writes:

Europe is two. One follows the sciences which serve justice and right
And the industries beneficial for the life of society it has received from
True Christianity; this first Europe I am not addressing. I am rather
Addressing the second, corrupt Europe which, through the darkness of
The philosophy of naturalism, supposing the evils of civilization to be
Its virtues, has driven mankind to vice and misguidance.

Michel routinely connects Nursi’s, and Islam’s, distress about materialism and greed with Christianity and Judaism’s distress about the same things. The book’s second essay charts the overlaps between Nursi and Pope John Paul II in their approaches to forgiveness. Both men believed that materialism, and the selfishness it fosters, are antithetical to healthy, fulfilled communities. People of faith, no matter their belief systems, believe that a truly rich life involves more than the simple acquisition of transient materials. This common desire – for communities based on mutual love and respect instead of self-interest – is a major point of convergence. As Nursi writes, “Our enemy, that which is destroying us, is Lord Ignorance, his son [Master] Poverty Efendi, and grandson, [Mr] Enmity Bey.”

Michel shows that, although Nursi believed adamantly in the truth of his faith, he also believed that true followers of the other “revealed religions” were friends and allies of Islam. Writing after the Second World War, Nursi stated that innocents who had died “were martyrs of a sort, whatever religion they belonged to.” In the aftermath of an invasion that mostly destroyed the city of Van, Nursi “…wept without distinction for both the Christian and Muslim victims, who had been his ‘friends and acquaintances.’” In these acts of kindness, Michel finds common ground with Nursi – both of their faiths value the dignity of every human life.

In a world in which the pursuit of wealth and immediate satisfaction guides so many human interactions, this value is not always present. All too often, people from different walks of life are viewed as obstacles to a person attaining the material satisfaction they’ve come to believe is rightfully theirs.

Michel sums up this perspective succinctly in one of the most important essays in the book, “Dialogue among Believers.” He writes, “Instead of fostering fellowship and mutual aid among nations, social values are too often oriented toward providing the populace with amusements, distractions, and opportunities for instant gratification.”

Such striving for material rewards – the pursuit of which lies at the heart of capitalism, which often functions as a “secular” religion – has resulted in the debasement and poverty of a large portion of the world’s population. This dehumanization and desacralizing of human life is at the root of most religious concerns about contemporary culture. Instead of working towards a “higher good” – community, peace, or God – people are focused on self-actualization through consumption. But as Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 4, verse 4, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The Qur’an echoes this when it says, in chapter 63, verse 9, “Let not your properties … divert you from the remembrance of God.” It’s not difficult to interpret these quotes to mean that humanity should not simply honor and respect God, but should also honor and respect God’s creations through reverence and peace. Material possessions alone cannot fill a person’s spirit; this is a belief almost all religions share.

Both Nursi and Michel feel that the absence of religion – and not the differences between faiths – has led to the wars and poverties of the last century. This is a belief that many, many people of faith share. The essays in the book continually return to these themes of common interest. By having a dialogue with Nursi’s text, and by viewing that text in its best possible context, Michel establishes a space for further dialogue between people of all faiths to occur. Both men express their adamant belief that faith – be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or something else – has an important, vital role to play in establishing a broad, lasting peace. Michel, like Nursi before him, remains hopeful about the future role faith will play in a more peaceful, tolerant world. This book serves as a dialogue between two religions, and it builds a foundation for future dialogues. It is a foundation built of respect, devoted faith, and a deep commitment to the dignity of every life. These are not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish values – they are universal values.