Dr. Sayılgan's day starts before most people's. Fajr (morning prayer), then writing while his mind is fresh, then coffee, then ten pages of Quran, three hadiths, a few pages of the Risale-i Nur, and some lines of poetry. He calls it the thing that sets up the day.

He grew up herding cows in a village in eastern Turkey, named by a Naqshbandi shaykh who came to visit when he was born. He went to boarding school in Konya, the city of Rumi. Then Istanbul, Estonia, a Christian seminary in Virginia, and eventually a Jesuit university in Washington, where he teaches a course called The Problem of God.

He teaches that course because of a question he has spent a decade on: why is there suffering? In 2022 the question stopped being academic. His daughter Maryam was killed in a car accident weeks before her fourth birthday, while he was finishing a book on evil and suffering in Islam. He will tell you plainly that he has no answer. What he has is taslim, submission, and a practice that did not stop.

We talk about Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, who wrote his life's work in exile and in prison, sometimes on matchboxes, and produced hope out of it. About what jihad actually means, and why Nursi called for the jihad of the pen. About why he says there is no word in any language for a parent who has lost a child. And about an Ottoman poem in which every single line ends with the word for water, and the water is the Prophet ﷺ.

Man laysa lahu wird, laysa lahu wārid.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

01:05 Ten pages, three hadiths, and a few lines of poetry

03:19 Why he reads Nursi every day

05:58 A village in eastern Turkey

06:51 Boarding school in Konya, the city of Rumi

07:44 Named by a shaykh

09:47 Istanbul, Estonia, and a Christian seminary

11:33 Why he chose religion

13:37 Said Nursi: writing on matchboxes in prison

15:59 Weakness as a starting point

19:31 What jihad actually means

21:35 The jihad of the pen

24:14 Islam in America: visibility and reaction

26:36 Why a cemetery matters

31:19 Studying Christianity

33:05 The Problem of God

35:26 Maryam

38:05 No word for a parent who lost a child

40:09 Taslim: the call from the hospital

42:30 A community that isn't afraid of death

46:56 Following the Prophet ﷺ

49:35 Imam Suyuti's treatise on losing a child

51:39 "The Prophet is the one who raised me"

53:43 Layla, Majnun, and seeing through another's eyes

57:16 Every line ends in water