September 20, 2012

Translating the Qur'an into Action

Hüseyin Bingül

Fethullah Gulen's recent book: Reflections on the Qur’an
An average English reader is often familiar with the Shakespearean character Hamlet and his inaction—or rather, delay in action—being at variance with his strong aspiration to restore order to the world around him. Despite his beautiful country rotting around him, the young nobleman Hamlet vacillates between listening to the inner voice of “the man of contemplation” and the inner voice of “the man of action.” The desolate quietness and inactivity of many intellectuals and thinkers of our modern age looks very much like the inability of Hamlet’s taking action. And when they finally decide to carry out their ideas, they mostly end up taking the wrong action, as in the Shakespearean tragedy of Hamlet. One may certainly be a man of original thoughts and lofty ideals, but thoughts go in vain unless they are implemented in practical, daily life. Dr. Suat Yıldırım rightly puts forward in his foreword to the honorable scholar and author M. Fethullah Gülen’s Reflections on the Qur’an that, “Integrating theoretical knowledge and thought with action is very rare, and indeed according to many is even impossible. Undoubtedly this assessment is true to an extent, but there are always exceptions, like the works of Fethullah Gülen. A renowned scholar and man of action and thought, Gülen adds this new work to his existing collection of more than fifty [now seventy] books.”[1]