At Freedom's Limit

In a section in the Risale-i Nur, Said Nursi figures the world as a market in which different seasons attract the demand for different products; in the modern age ‘the goods of politics and securing the life of this world and the demand of philosophy are sought after’. Compared to the time of the first generations of Islam when ‘the discussions, conversations, events and circumstances of social life all looked to the wishes of [the Sustainer of the Heavens and the Earth]’, in our time ‘due to the domination of European civilization and the supremacy of natural philosophy [Science] and the preponderance of the conditions of worldly life, minds and hearts have become scattered, and endeavour and favour divided. Minds have become strangers to non-material matters.’