Nur Movement

Nurism ( or Nur Cemaati) is an Islamic movement that was founded in Turkey in the early 20th century and based on the writings of Said Nursi (1877–1960). He emphasized the importance of salvation in both this life and the afterlife through education and freedom, the synthesis of Islam and science, and democracy as the best form of governance within the rule of law.

Through faith by inquiry instead of faith by imitation, Muslims would reject philosophies such as positivism, materialism and atheism emerging from the Western world at the time. His notion of sharia is twofold. Sharia applies to the voluntary actions of human beings and denotes the set of laws of nature. Both of them ultimately derive from one source, God. His works on the Quran in the Risale-i Nur were translated into almost all of the languages of Central Asia. The Nurcu Movement promotes the concept of the Quran as an eternal document, but one which needs to be continually reinterpreted. After Nursi’s death, several groups emerged from within the Nur Movement, including the Gülen movement, the Yeni Asya movement, the Publishers (Yazıcılar), and the Readers (Okuyucular).