Fethullah Gulen

In this first ever life story of Fethullah Gülen, Jon Pahl explores the story of one of the most controversial figures of our times both as the personal biography of the person from Turkey to the United States and the public biography of the social movement he has inspired.

Fethullah Gülen'swork and writings have inspired a transnational civic movement that advocates for education, promotes intercultural and interfaith understanding, and delivers humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Originated in Turkey, this "Hizmet" or "Gülen Movement" is active in more than one hundred countries across the globe. So That Others May Live offers a definitive compilation of Gülen's characteristic essays. Some of them are available here in English for the first time. The rest have been carefully re-translated and edited, providing even familiar readers with new insight into Gülen's most remarkable writings on faith, morality, education, civic service, and modern civilization.

Fethullah G len is a moderate Turkish Muslim scholar who is known mostly for his education and dialogue activities. The Hizmet Movement, inspired by G len, has established hundreds of education and dialogue institutions throughout the world. Several books and hundreds of articles and news reports have been written about G len himself and the movement. In recent years, a defamation campaign has been launched against G len and the Hizmet Movement. Although these defamation articles may seem random, this book will show that the articles are written strategically in a campaign manner. In Strategic Defamation of Fethullah G len, close to 500 defamation articles, books, and other forms of writings are analyzed according to their languages. Ko concludes that these defamations are not random and that they appear according to their respective audiences.

This is a book about an Islamic movement, the Gülen Movement, that is rooted in a moderate version of Islam and that promotes interfaith and intercultural dialog and global peace. Based on interviews with supporters of the movement in Turkey and in the U.S. and visits to Gülen-inspired schools, hospitals, newspapers and relief organizations, the book describes a movement that has millions of supporters in Turkey and that has spread to over 100 countries on five continents.

Understanding both Fethullah Gulen, a moderate Turkish Muslim scholar, and the Gulen Movement, a global network of volunteers, teachers, students, intellectuals and business people who are inspired by Gulen's philosophy based on dialog and peaceful coexistence, is vital to making any sort of predictions about the direction that Turkey might be headed in the next years. Who is Fethullah Gulen? What is Gulen;s worldview and what are his fundamental ideas about society and the state. How does Gulen view history and what does he consider the most important events? What are the basic principles of the Gulen movement? These questions and more are posed ans answered in detail in this book.

Fethullah Gülen is a leading figure in the current Turkish socio-political context. Regardless of the impression different circles have about him, he is universally acknowledged as an accomplished scholar and independent thinker who has had a life in tears dreaming of a “golden generation,” but also a life spent in persecution and ongoing trials. This book goes beyond the current controversy around his name, and tries to explore Gülen as a scholar around his certain personal traits and some of the key concepts he has been emphasizing over the years to mobilize his audience. Based on a research that covers over seventy books, 564 sermons, over 500 talks by Gülen, more than fifty interviews of his close associates and friends aired on TV networks, and the author’s personal observations, this book is a useful reference for those who study scholarly traditions of Islam in general and Fethullah Gülen in particular.

Time to Talk , a detailed interview of Fethullah Gulen by Ekrem Dumanli, is a defense manifesto of the Hizmet Movement which has been engaged in educational activities around the world and in Turkey for five decades. The content of the talk once again confirms that the Movement, which has never been involved in any illegal activity whatsoever since its inception, expects nothing but the establishment of bridges of peace and brotherhood throughout the world. Gulen's responses to the questions on the association of the Hizmet Movement with the so-called "parallel state," the December 17 corruption investigation and many other critical inquiries eliminate the suspicions.

The "Hizmet" ("Service") Movement of Fethullah Gülen is Turkey’s most influential Islamic identity community. Widely praised throughout the early 2000s as a mild and moderate variation on Islamic political identity, the Gülen Movement has long been a topic of both adulation and conspiracy in Turkey, and has become more controversial as it spreads across the world. In Gülen, Joshua D. Hendrick suggests that when analyzed in accordance with its political and economic impact, the Gülen Movement, despite both praise and criticism, should be given credit for playing a significant role in Turkey's rise to global prominence. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey and the U.S., Hendrick examines the Gülen Movement’s role in Turkey’s recent rise, as well as its strategic relationship with Turkey’s Justice and Development Party-led government. He argues that the movement’s growth and impact both inside and outside Turkey position both its leader and its followers as indicative of a "post political" turn in twenty-first century Islamic political identity in general, and as illustrative of Turkey’s political, economic, and cultural transformation in particular. Joshua D. Hendrick is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore.