"The science of theology... Issues and personalities". The earthquake controversy between Muslim speakers and Western philosophers

The Ottoman theologian and philosopher (Turkish-Kurdish) Badiuzzaman Nursi (1878-1960) separates the French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) about two centuries, and more than 4,<> kilometers is the distance from Tbilisi (eastern Anatolia) to Paris, but human thought does not know these distances and differences, especially when it interacts with similar events such as earthquakes that are the talk of people in the world now, after natural disasters such as the earthquakes of Turkey, Syria and Morocco and the devastating floods of Libya.

Voltaire wrote, "I do not know what is more useful to complete the taste than the encounter between the great geniuses who dealt with the eye of subjects." What did Nursi say about the devastating 1939 earthquake that struck the Turkish city of Erzincan, killing about 40,1755 people and demolishing many thousands of homes? And what did Voltaire say about the Lisbon earthquake that struck it in <> and killed tens of thousands, cracked the ground, and destroyed buildings?

This is one of the topics of a new book recently published by Dar Al-Muhrir in Cairo by the Egyptian academic Nabil Foley, professor at Fatih Sultan Mehmet University in Istanbul, under the title "The Science of Theology... Issues and personalities."

Foley chose to present almost traditional issues in the field of theological studies, but the writing style came modernist par excellence, where the search for backgrounds, motives and goals that affect the movement of ideas and their trends, which makes us rightly consider it an applied book in one of the latest sciences, the science of the history of ideas, which began to talk about the American Arthur Lovejoy (in 1962), the author of the book "The Great Chain of Being" and then developed this branch of knowledge after a great development.

This book was recently published by Dar Al-Muhrir by the Egyptian academic Nabil Foley (Al Jazeera)

Philosophy of earthquakes

In the chapter in which these lines are titled, the author presented a comparative model of thinkers' attitudes towards the catastrophic events of the universe, in order to highlight the psychological and cultural influences and general civilizational conditions that make these attitudes, and chose two personalities belonging to two different cultural environments to study their intellectual position on earthquakes, where people always talk a lot with their occurrence, in an attempt to understand this painful shock that occurs to people from time to place to time.

Voltaire attacked those who say that the Lisbon earthquake was a divine punishment for people for their sins, and he put it in poetry:

"Will you say that God took revenge on them, and that their death is a price for their crimes?!
What crime and guilt did a child lying on his mother's breast shed blood commit?!
Has Lisbon indulged in debauchery more than London or Paris, which live happily?!
The truth is that Lisbon is broken, and people are dancing in Paris!"

He also rejected the statement of those who saw that this was part of the complete order of the universe that there could be no fuller than it, and said in them:

"You say: everything is fine, everything is necessary!
Do you think that this universe without this abyss that swallowed Lisbon would be worse off?!"

"Who said to the grieving inhabitants of these desolate beaches: You have fallen and died in peace, your homes have been destroyed for the good of the world?"

Voltaire wrote a long poem and a novel entitled "Candide" to respond to the optimists of the German philosopher Leibniz, and to all the justifications that seemed to him unreasonable in explaining the occurrence of earthquakes.

He argued that we must accept the world as it is as God created it with His great gifts and terrifying disasters, and cooperate in minimizing their negative effects. It is a pragmatic doctrine that emerged early and was later strongly strengthened, albeit with a semi-explicit atheistic veneer in Albert Camus's The Plague.

Good and evil according to Voltaire and Nursi

It is ironic that Voltaire chooses for the story of the Sufi position of disasters – as he conceived – an Ottoman philosophical mystic, the heroes of the novel "Candide" who were all hit by a large series of calamities and great disasters "and there was in the vicinity a famous dervish counted the best philosopher in Turkey, and they go to consult him, and deals with the bungalows speech, and says to him: Professor, we came to ask you to tell us the reason for the creation of a strange animal like man? Al-Darwish says to him: What is your involvement in the matter? Is this your business? And Kendide says: But, respected father, there is tremendous evil in this world. Al-Darwish says: What is the importance of having good or evil? If the Majesty sends a ship to Egypt, does he care whether the rats on the ship are resting or not? And Benglos says, "So, what should be done?" Al-Darwish says: To cut off your tongue from speaking. Benglos says: I covet to discuss with you a little the causes and ills, the best possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and the predestined order. When the dervish heard these words, the door was violently closed in their faces!"

As for Nursi, he fought a battle against the atheists who provided the Erzincan earthquake with an analysis that proves the absurdity of the events of existence, and that to say any theory of faith to show some wisdom in earthquakes and cosmic disasters is absurd that should be avoided! As well as those who denied that what happened was behind a wise worker, believing that what happened is nothing but the actions of nature itself, since pure natural factors and conditions conform to leading to such results independently of any religious ideas or beliefs.

He stressed that God cannot afflict His servants with this grave injury without having eloquent divine wisdom behind it, and without this great loss having value, and says, "How can this incident full of death be unintentionally or purposeless, as published by an atheist, thinking that it is just a coincidence, committing an obscene mistake and committing an ugly injustice, as all the money and lives lost by the injured became in vain, throwing them in painful despair. Such incidents always save the wealth of the people of faith, transforming it by the command of the wise and merciful into charity for them, which is the atonement for sins arising from the atonement of graces."

Nursi also denied the existence of a direct relationship between disasters and the actions of the servants, just as the calamity when it affects the creation is not a sign of indignation at all, it is not a penalty for the servants at all, so God may leave the infidel criminal unjust, and infect the obedient or disobedient believer or the infidel less tyrannical, as there is no direct relationship between these cosmic norms and the goodness of creation and their corruption, and if it were the opposite, people would have resorted to what achieves their salvation in faith or infidelity.

French poet Voltaire (right) and Turkish Kurdish philosopher and theologian Badiuzzaman Nursi (Shutterstock)

He stressed that the reasons should not cover us up the existence of creative power behind this system, and the proof of this is that human causes cannot make a single tree out of these many billions that fill the earth, so we must return the whole system to the creative creator, and to the wise man who achieved this coordination in existence.

Nursi states that the earthquake will be a wake-up call for the unwary of the people of faith, and in the disobedience of the believers who were struck by the earthquake, he also said, "There are many signs that this incident targeted the people of faith, as it occurred in the harsh winter and in the darkness of the night and in the severity of the cold, especially in this country where the month of Ramadan is not respected, and its continuation arising from the lack of people learning from it, and to wake up the unwary from their sleep lightly, and the likes of the Emirates indicate that this incident targeted the people of faith, and that it is heading to them, and shake them in particular to push them to pray, pray and pray to Him, glory be to Him."

For the unbeliever, disasters achieve the same goal as before, which is to alert people to their inattention: "The Lord of the worlds slapped humanity with terrifying public scourges and scourges such as world war, earthquakes, torrential floods, roaring winds, burning lightning, and devastating floods. All this is to awaken this man who is in his negligence, and to market him to abandon his arrogance and terrible tyranny, and to introduce him to his great Lord who is exposed to him, so that the Almighty showed his wisdom, power, justice, righteousness, will and governance in a clear way."

In a philosophical vision of cosmic disasters, Nursi saw that adversity and afflictions represent a kind of cosmic renewal, away from the steady that nothing penetrates, and says, "Existence is pure good, and nothingness is pure evil, and the evidence is the return of all merits, perfections and virtues to existence, and the fact that nothingness is the basis of all sins, calamities and shortcomings. Since nothingness is pure evil, the states that are dragged into nothingness, or smell from nothingness, also include evil, so life, which is the brightest light of existence, is strengthened by its fluctuation within different conditions, and is filtered by entering different situations, and produces the fruits required by taking multiple modalities."

The intellectual and social function of speech

In another chapter, the book dealt with the intellectual and social function of the doctrinal comments broadcast by Imam Tirmidhi in the folds of his book "Jami' al-Sunan al-Kabir" famous for Sunan al-Tirmidhi, in which the direct and strong connection between the books of science and the reality of intellectual and behavioral life was confirmed, in addition to al-Tirmidhi's authorship of the Sunan in order to express in modern texts the provisions of Sharia in issues of jurisprudence and ethics, the comments that he added to some of these narrations were concerned with explaining the position of the predecessors on some issues that were and are still in dispute between people, and from Here comes its intellectual and social function.

In order to monitor another old intellectual battle, the author toured us in the eighth century AH in an issue that is directly related to our present cultural reality, as we now have a sharp disagreement that is no secret to anyone between the Ash'ari and Salafi schools, which are overflowing with books, newspapers, social networking sites, and even forums and mosques.

The study of "the origins and cultural and social motives of Sobki's objections to Al-Dhahabi in his translations of Ash'ari speakers" represents an old example of this almost the same dispute, as Al-Subki (Taj al-Din) took on his Sheikh Al-Dhahabi (a student of Ibn Taymiyyah) his bias towards the Hanbalis at the expense of the Ash'aris, who represented the largest scientific bloc in the state at the time, within cultural and social conditions that made the same subject subject to conflicting intellectual interpretations.

In observing another intellectual battle, instead of addressing the author, as a researcher specializing in formal logic and theology, the famous dispute between Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal and his friend Imam Husayn al-Karabisi over the judgement of the reciter's pronunciation of the Qur'an, whether it is created or not, in a traditional way within the scope of dealing with the abstract idea, the author studied the subject within what he called "the outcomes of opinion." The two imams did not really differ their opinion on this issue, but both believe that the voice of the reader of the Qur'an created no doubt, but Ahmed took into account something that did not pay attention to his owner, which is that delving into this issue may develop "and devolve" into false opinions such as saying the creation of the Qur'an itself, so it is necessary to stop delving into it, even by telling the truth!

What Imam Ahmad feared, especially from some of his Hanbali followers themselves, and it is strange in the development of ideas, has already happened, as they understood that Ahmad's rejection of Al-Karabisi's statement that our reading and uttering of the Qur'an is created means that he is saying that our reading of the Qur'an is not created! Shaykh Ibn Taymiyyah recorded this idea, asserting that "the people of Khorasan (who misunderstood this issue) had no knowledge of Ahmad's sayings as much as the people of Iraq, who were special to him."

Ahmed and al-Karabisi had a rupture after this intellectual battle, and Ahmad's criticism of his old author led people to abandon him and his novel, until Ibn Hajar tried centuries later to do him justice, and appreciate his great scientific potential.

This new intellectual birth came in 237 pages, presented and reviewed by the Egyptian writer and thinker Osama Al-Qafash, and included 6 chapters, dealing with various ideas of personalities varying in place and time, such as: Ahmed bin Hanbal, Al-Karabisi, Al-Bukhari, Al-Tirmidhi, Ibn Forak, Al-Juwayni, Al-Dhahabi, Al-Sobki, Voltaire, Muhammad Iqbal, Nursi, Hassan Al-Shafei, and others.

While the reader feels the sudden chronological transition from one chapter to another, the focus on the history of the idea and the scopes in which it moves has been an important catch-all for this diaspora.