Faraz Masood Sheikh - Forging Ideal Muslim Subjects

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Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said. Living the Quran with Joy and Purpose: Selections on Tawhid from Said Nursis Epistle of Light (forthcoming). Translated with introduction and notes by Yamina Bouguenaya and Isra Yazicioglu. Gorgias Press, 2020.

Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said. The Letters: From the Risale-i Nur Collection. Translated by Sukran Vahide. Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1994.

Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said. The Flashes: From the Risale-i Nur Collection. Translated by Sukran Vahide. Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1995.

Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said. The Words: From the Risale-i Nur Collection. Translated by Sukran Vahide. Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2004.

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I have had good teachers and caring mentors: Aaron Stalnaker, Richard Miller, Kevin Jaques, Constance Furey, Nazif Shahrani, John Walbridge, Shaul Magid, David Vishanoff and Zainab Istrabadi. Thank you! Their scholarship, guidance and encouragement were crucial for the conception and execution of this project. My colleagues at the religious studies department at William & Mary have been exceptionally collegial, supportive and intellectually engaging. My conversations with them have helped me think more deeply and clearly about the aims and arguments of this book. Thank you! I thank Shahzad, Muhammad Hasan, Elijah Reynolds and Munir Jibril for their generous and prompt help with translating and deciphering Muhasibis dense Arabic prose over the past many years. My editors at Lexington, Michael Gibson and Mikayla Mislak, have been a pleasure to work with: thorough, professional, prompt and collegial. Thank you! I wish to thank Gorgias Press for giving me permission to cite from their forthcoming title, Selections on Tawhid from Said Nursi, by Yamina Bougenaya and Isra Yazicioglu. I also wish to thank Sukran Vahide and Sz Basm Yayn for giving me permission to use excerpts from Vahides English translation of Nursis works, the Words, Letters, and Flashes.

My deep and sincere appreciation is due to Dr. Ali Mermer and Dr. Yamina Bougenaya. They introduced me to the writings of Said Nursi. They have had an anchoring effect on my intellectual and spiritual life. I am truly grateful to them for helping me notice and understand aspects of Nursis methodology and thought that would otherwise have certainly escaped my attention. They have been intellectual and spiritual role models. Over the years, I have had the privilege of keeping company with a circle of intellectually honest, affectionate and thoughtful friends through weekly discussion circles. I thank them all for generously sharing their wisdom, hospitality, comradery and humanity with me. My ongoing conversations with them have helped shaped some of the ideas presented in this book. The list of friends is long and I mention just a few names that come to my forgetful and aging mind: Andrea Dziubek, Omer Tatari, Maha Nour, Asma Mermer, Elijah Reynolds, Yusuf Osmanlioglu, Birkan Tunc, Zafer Ozdemir, Muhammed Alan, Aysenur Guc, Hatice Beyza, Aalia Khidr and several others.

I want to thank my family and my wifes family for their unfailing support and love. For their affection and hospitality, I thank my in-laws: Osman and Selma Yazicioglu, Latife and Shahin, Ridvan and Benan. They welcomed me into their hearts and homes and prayed incessantly for my success and well-being. My loving and adorable nephews and nieces, Ryva, Ehaab, Zaynah and Raeha, brought immense joy into my life during years of cheerless isolation that was often demanded by this book. Not a small part of the emotional energy needed to write this book came from a desire to make them proud of their absentee uncle. Thank you! To my beloved brothers, my best friends and my pillars of support, for whom my smallest successes have always been cause for great joy and celebration, Asim and Samir and their families. I offer to all of them my love and sincere thanks. A large extended family on both sides, mine and Isras, have helped us in indescribable ways and I thank them all for their good wishes and support from the bottom of my heart. A special mention for my late paternal uncle, Naseem Ullah Sheikh. He would have been overjoyed and especially proud had he lived to see the publication of this book.