Foreword
The words represents a 10-year effort by Said Nursi to spread the essential truths of Islam especially pertaining to Islamic thought and belief while enduring strict surveillance and occasional imprisonment based upon unproven charges. During this time of hardship,
Said Nursi, his disciples, and Turkish Muslims trying to live a religious life were passing through a harsh time. Faced with the erection of the Republic of Turkey upon the ruins of the Ottoman State, as well as the replacement of centuries of Islamic traditions with European imports in the legal, official, education, and personal spheres, Said Nursi exerted all of his intellectual and literary talents to ensure that the Turkish people and society would not slip out of the sphere of Islam altogether.
An active participant in the social arena, Said Nursi gradually eschewed such activism on the grounds that politics divides Muslims against each other and weakens them in an already hostile environment. Marking this choice by referring to himself as the “New Said” in his writings, he spent the rest of his life explaining Islam’s truths in modern and scientific terminology to counteract the newly emerging anti-religious trends.