Said Nursi panel draws great interest in Melbourne

2009-12-10 10:22:31

A panel discussion devoted to the teachings of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, an early 20th century religious scholar of Islam from southeastern Turkey, drew much interest from participants of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, which concluded yesterday in Melbourne. 

First held in Chicago in 1893 under the name the World’s Parliament of Religions, the gathering brings together the world’s religious and spiritual communities, their leaders and their followers to a gathering where peace, diversity and sustainability are discussed and explored in the context of inter-religious understanding and cooperation. This year the parliament was held in Australia, and the organizers held simultaneous sessions in different halls on a variety of topics.

One of the sessions focused on Nursi (1876-1960), whose writings mainly comprise letters to his students about faith and religious philosophy and questions and answers. Professor Faris Kaya, secretary-general of the İstanbul Foundation of Science and Culture; Professor Yunus Çengel of the University of Nevada, Reno; Professor Abdullah Saeed of the University of Melbourne; Canadian-Turkish scholar Bilal Kuşpınar of McGill University; and American scholar Thomas Michel, S.J., the director of the Jesuit Secretariat for Interreligious Dialogue in Rome and currently a Woodstock International Fellow at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., were among the experts who spoke at the session, titled “Christian Muslim Engagement: Action through Understanding in the Writings of Said Nursi.”

Nursi’s commentary on the Quran, the “Risale-i Nur,” was also exhibited at the parliament along with writings about his life and work in various languages.

The panel discussion began with speeches and presentations, followed by question and answers from participants. Underlining that Nursi had started a movement to call people to spiritual values without taking into consideration their race or religion but by embracing humankind with an understanding of compassion based on faith, speakers stressed the importance of Nursi’s visit to the İstanbul Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to propose that he and the patriarch cooperate against atheism and materialism in the 1950s, when inter-religious dialogue was almost unheard of. They presented the case as an important milestone in Muslim-Christian dialogue.

Since the centenary gathering in 1993, the Parliament of the World’s Religions has convened approximately every five years in a major city (Chicago 1993, Cape Town 1999, Barcelona 2004). More than 10,000 participants from various religions were invited to attend.
 
10 December 2009, Thursday
 

 
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Professor Abdullah Saeed at the Parliament of Religions. 3-9 December