"Islamic Tradition and Modernity from Confrontation to Intellectual Interaction"

Mazman, Ibrahim, M.S., Thesis, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, Supervisor: Assoc.Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Özdalga, 60p., September, 1993. 

This study aims to examine the phenomenon of intellectual interaction between Islamic and Western philosophical and theological traditions. Though Aristotle who
was one of the important philosophers in the ancient Greece, approached Being as Being by itself, the main attempt of Islamic intellectual tradition has been to define
the nature of knowledge and being itself as given by the authority of revelation and the view of God's omni potentiality over the Universe. However, with the
development of modern society along with the political and economic changes in the West, it brought new scientific and philosophical visions. Those revolved around
the themes of man as a subject and the abstraction of nature. As a thinker deeply involved in these issues, Said Nursi represents an effort that tries to transform
Islamic intellectual tradition into the language of the modern world. He stands out as an original thinker against modernist attitude of Muslim intellectuals or
"oppositional" attempt of traditional ulema to modernity. In this study, it is argued that transformation of the language of Islamic intellectual tradition to that of
modernity seems to be necessary, if we want to evaluate Islam and modernity in a non-reductionist way. It would prevent mutual misunderstandings between two
Worlds; Islam and the West. It should be noticed that Said Nursi has done a significant contribution to opening the doors for a possible dialogue between two
different intellectual traditions by means of "meaning transformation".

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