Fethullah Gülen
M. Fethullah Gülen is a former Islamic preacher, and the foremost leader of the "Nurcu" movement in Turkey. His supporters hail him as an important Islamic scholar with liberal ideas, while detractors accuse him for illegal activities aimed at undermining the secular republic and replacing it with an Islamic state. His followers are commonly referred to as Fethullahci (Supporters of Fethullah), while they choose to refer themselves as "Hizmet Insani" (Those devoted to service to others). His influence extends over much of Central Asia and Caucasus.
Biography
Born in Erzurum, in eastern Turkey, in 1938. He did not have a formal education, completed primary education at home, and instead focused on an Islamic education [1]. In 1959 was awarded a state preacher’s license (in Edirne). In 1966 he was moved to a post in Izmir. It was here that Gülen's recurring themes began to crystallize and his audience base began to expand. He also traveled around the provinces in Anatolia and lectured not only in mosques, but also at town meetings and corner coffee houses. From Izmir on, he placed a special emphasis on promulgating his ideas to high school and college students.
The subject matter of his speeches, whether formal or informal, was not restricted to religious questions; he talked about education, science, Darwinism,economy and social justice. His focus was to urge the younger generation to harmonize intellectual enlightenment with wise spirituality and humane activism. He proved to be an eloquent and moving speaker. He had a broad range of topics and a deeper level of analysis in comparison to other Islamic preachers, moreover, his sermons were emotionally very intense; at their climax he often burst into tears and had emotional fits, an act usually associated with the mystical tradation. These sermons were taped by his followers and distibuted around the country around a time where Islamic activities were viewed with high suspicion and proved instrumental in raising money for the movement[2].
In 1971 he was convicted to 3 years for his pro-Islamic activities [3]. Gülen retired from formal preaching duties in 1981. Later, between 1988 and 1991, he gave a series of sermons popular mosques of major cities. His long career had made him a well know figure in the Islamic spheres, and in particular, within the Nurcu movement, however, it was in the 1990s, with the rise of Islamic movement in Turkey, the fruits of his emphasis on education, and mutual courtship between his movement and the center-right political parties that made him a public figure.
Recent Contraversies
Gulen became a highly controversial figure in 1997, when a number of videocassetes with his sermons were broadcast on the TV channels. While he was always vieweved with suspicion among non-liberal secular groups, it was the accesible nature of the tapes that made the controversy reach general public. In the tapes, allegedly distributed exclusively among his supporters, he is shown preaching a fight against the secular republic and replacing it with an Islamic state. Moreover, while Gulen was often promoted as a learned, humble and tolerant figure, the tapes showed him openly cursing the secular republic and its founder, Mustafa Kemal, promoting acting stealthly to infiltrate and bring down the institutions of the republic. Shortly before the tapes surfaced, Gulen left Turkey and settled in the US, allegedly for health reasons. Within weeks, he was charged with conspiring against the republic, but he did not attend the trials. In 2003, the trial was postponed, subject to reprocessing if he is indicted with a similar crime in the following 5 years. Gulen has since been living in the US, but his popularity among his supporters has not vained.
The authenticity of the tapes are debated. Some of Gulen's supporters claim they were fabricated by monatages of video segments taken out of context. This, however, brings little relief, as often the individual sentences within the broadcast were highly offensive and the sermons in the tapes were largely coherent. If true, a more vindicating claim by his supporters is that sophisticated computer animation techniques were used to modify Gulen's sermons. Recently, former deputy of Gulen, Nurettin Veren, claimed to have been ostracized by the group because he was mistakenly identified to be the one to have given the tapes to media outlets, which indirectly provides evidence for the authenticity of the claims. Moreover, critics of Gulen argue, Gulen's own writings, some of which is quoted below, are in accordance with the ideas mentioned in the tapes; he pushes to make Islam the guiding principle in the society while at the same time advising his followers caution and an embracing attitude until the conditions are ripe [4].
Gulen's appeal to various ideological strands in Turkey differs. His supporters probably constitute the most influential Islamic movement in Turkey both for its human and financial capital.Various other shades of the Islamic movement and conservative segments of the society are generally sympathetic to him. His detractors are mostly nationalistic wing of the secularists, critical of his alleged affinity for a theocratic society and his ties to the US. For the elites, the ranks are broken by certain liberals, who point out that Gulen's group, at least in its public representation, has proven to be most willing to evolve and most open to international influence.
Specifically worthy of mention is the ongoing tension between the Turkish army and Gulen's supporters. Due to its spearheading westernization and secularization since the late Ottoman era, the army has always viewed Islamic movements with suspicion and since the 1980s has identified Gulen group as the main threat to Republic. In 1986, the martial court revealed Gulen's supporters had infiltrated into the military academy and the group was purged. [5]. From then on, the army has repatedly purged alleged Gulen supporters from its ranks and pressured elected politicans against Gulen [6]. In response, Gulen has praised the army publicly various times and attempted to allay its fears about the group's intentions, but the tension remains[7].
Gulen According to Supporters
Gulen's ideas build on the nonmaterialistic Islamic approach of Said Nursi. He has published widely and has taken somewhat contradictory positions. His supporters and critics respectively choose to emphasize his liberal and fundemantilists ideas.
According to his supporters, Gülen envisions a twenty-first century in which we shall witness the birth of a spiritual dynamic that will revitalize long-dormant moral values; an age of tolerance, understanding, and international cooperation that will ultimately lead, through inter-cultural dialogue and a sharing of values, to a single, inclusive civilization. Towards this goal, he has focused his efforts in building educational institutions based on this ideal in Turkey, Central Asia and other parts of the world. has, over the years, encouraged the social elite and community leaders, powerful industrialists as well as small businessmen, to support quality education. In his own writings, he justifies the effort by saying that the road to justice for all is dependent on the provision of an adequate and appropriate universal education. Only then will there be sufficient understanding and tolerance to secure respect for the rights of others.
Likewise, his supporters claim Gülen believes in the modern world the only way to get others to accept your ideas is by persuasion. He describes those who resort to force as being intellectually bankrupt; people will always demand freedom of choice in the way they run their affairs and in their expression of their spiritual and religious values. In published works, Gulen argues, Democracy, in spite of its many shortcomings, is now the only viable political system, and people should strive to modernize and consolidate democratic institutions in order to build a society where individual rights and freedoms are respected and protected, where equal opportunity for all is more than a dream.
Starting with the 1990s, Gulen's broadening public appeal has been accompanied by publicized outreachs to different religious figures. In 1999, his paper "The Necessity of Interfaith Dialogue" was presented to the Parliament of World’s Religions in Cape Town, December 1-8. He has helped to establish the "Journalists and Writers Foundation" in 1994, with the declared goal of promoting dialogue and tolerance among all strata of the society. Gulen visited and received important figures, including Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, the late John O’Connor, Archbishop of New York, Leon Levy, former president of The Anti-Defamation League, the Vatican’s Ambassador to Turkey, the Patriarch of the Turkish Orthodox Church, the Patriarch of the Turkish Armenian community, and the Chief Rabbi of the Turkish Jewish community.
Gulen's activities and outreach is unparalled in the history of the Turkish Republic, particularly because since its foundation the secular state was highly suspicous of popular religious leaders who act independent of the state apparatus. Especially controversial in this respect was the meeting between the Pope and Gulen, which his detractors consider served Gulen's aim of becoming an Islamic pope. Gulen, on the other hand, maintains that "dialogue is a must" and that people, regardless of nation or political borders, have far more in common than they realize. By his own account, in his meeting with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1998, Gülen presented a proposal to take firm steps to stop the conflict in the Middle East via collaborative work on this soil, a place where all three religions originated. In his proposal, he also underlined the fact that science and religion are in fact two different aspects that emanate from the same truth: "Humankind from time to time has denied religion in the name of science and denied science in the name of religion, arguing that the two present conflicting views. All knowledge belongs to God and religion is from God. How then can the two be in conflict? To this end, our joint efforts directed at inter-religious dialogue can do much to improve understanding and tolerance among people."
Gülen, who was then residing in the U.S., released a press declaration renouncing the September 11th terrorist attacks, which he regarded as a great blow to world peace that unfairly tarnished the credit of believers: ". . . terror can never be used in the name of Islam or for the sake of any Islamic ends. A terrorist cannot be a Muslim and a Muslim cannot be a terrorist. A Muslim can only be the representative and symbol of peace, welfare, and prosperity."
Gülen’s supporters include journalists, academics, TV personalities, politicians, and Turkish and foreign state authorities. By his followers he is promoted as a true innovator and social reformer who practices what he preaches, as a peace activist, an intellectual, a religious scholar, a mentor, author and poet, a great thinker and spiritual guide who has devoted his life to seeking the solutions for society’s ills and spiritual needs. They see the movement he helped to nurture as a movement dedicated to education, but an education of the heart and soul as well as of the mind, aimed at reviving and invigorating the whole being to achieve competence and providing goods and services useful to others.
Works
Gülen contributes to a number of journals and magazines owned by his followers. He writes the lead article for the Fountain, Yeni Ümit, Sızıntı, and Yagmur, leading Islamic and philosophical magazines in Turkey. He has written more than forty books, hundreds of articles, and recorded thousands of audio and videocassettes. The videocasettes played a crucial role in promoting his ideas in his early years. Some of his books have been made available in English translations, such as, Muhammad: The Messenger of God, Questions and Answers about Faith, Pearls of Wisdom, Prophet Muhammad as Commander, The Essentials of the Islamic Faith, Towards the Lost Paradise, Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism. A number have also been translated into German, Russian, Albanian, Japanese, Indonesian, and Spanish.
Critical Views of Gulen
In other works, mostly in Turkish, he has promoted more contraversial and fundemantalist ideas. The excerpts from these books have been published in the recent court case against him [8]. Accordingly, "War against the infidels, Jihad is bound to continue until the Apocalypse, because no matter how tolerant we act there will always be infidels that insist on being sinners... Those engaining in Cihad will either lose their lives and attain eternal happiness, or stay alive, but that's only better, as then they will attain happiness both in this world and the other." Controversy also followed when in 2004 he announced he equated a murderer to an atheist[9]. Overall, these writings constrast starkly with the public statements by the group, and has led a number of researchers to claim Gulen's public efforts in the 1990's does not represent his real intentions [10].
Related Articles
External Links
Indictment of the prosecuter of the Fethullah Gulen Trial (in Turkish)
Supporters
- http://www.fgulen.org/ (Official and most uptodate)
- http://en.fgulen.com/ (English version)
- http://www.fgulen.org/privacy.php
- http://www.mfethullahgulen.com/
- http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/meria/journal/2000/issue4/jv4n4a4.html
- http://blog.masud.co.uk/2004/04/series-of-interviews-with-fethullah.htm
- http://www.religioscope.com/info/articles/007_fetullahci.htm