Gurkan Celik & Yusuf Alan Gülen was born in 1941in Erzurum, eastern Turkey, just twenty-odd years after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. The war for Independence, transition from one regime to another, the Second World War and global phenomena of modernity versus religion had all taken […]
Fabio Vicini* Fethullah Gülen thinks that in order to spread its beneficial effects, the religious message should reach as many members of society as possible. However, he rejects any political use of Islam. He argues religion cannot be yielded to party needs because it cannot be reduced to an ideological instrument. In his words politics “darkens religion’s […]
Maimul Ahsan Khan Fethullah Gulen started his professional career as a traditional imam, trained and certificated by the governmental authorities in Ankara. His innovative ideas of educational and social reform have made him a household name in modern Turkey and increasingly around the world for several decades now. In 2008 he was recognized as the […]
I argue it is exactly here that Gülen links his Islamic ethics to secular morals. To explain this point better I will draw your attention to the connection Gülen usually establishes between the sense of responsibility and endless activism. Indeed I think the way Gülen conceives responsibility has a lot in common with secular theories about the subject and its agency.
Gülen’s followers believe that values are taught through example, not through lecturing. Gülen teaches that the human possession of free will entails an obligation to discipline it, and it is the struggle for discipline that determines humanity. Educators in Gülen schools teach ethical values through example, rather than preaching them.
Fethullah Gülen envisions a “Golden Generation”, that is well-educated in the sciences and well-rounded in moral training. The prototype of the Golden Generation is the teacher of the movement who works to bring on a “Golden Age.” The Golden Generation has the defining characteristics of faith and strong ethical values, which drive them to apply science for the benefit of humankind.
Fabio Vicini The members of the movement I met and frequented in Istanbul during my brief fieldwork in summer/autumn 2005, are all teachers in a school linked to the movement. There they prepared high school graduates to the entrance exam to Turkish state university. All of them live in a dormitory not very far from […]
Fabio Vicini When Gülen criticizes traditional forms of Islamic education for not having been able to adapt to modern conditions, he expresses something more than a simple dissatisfaction with old methods of teaching. Instead he blames other Islamic scholars because they had not understood that the decline of Islam was not solely due to its […]
Greg Barton Gülen is generally seen to draw directly on the intellectual heritage of the influential and greatly loved Sufi scholar and writer Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. And indeed, an examination of Gülen’s writing reveals it to be substantially built upon the foundation laid by Nursi, who in turn drew upon the great Anatolian Sufi Mevlana […]
Gülen is no expert in the history of religions, but he does assert clearly that “no divine religion has ever been based on conflict, whether it be the religions represented by Moses and Jesus, or the religion represented by Muhammad, upon them be peace. On the contrary, these religions, especially Islam, are strictly against disorder, treachery, conflict, and oppression”