Gülen: “Members of minority communities should be allowed to live according to their beliefs. If these sorts of legislations are made within the norms of international law and international agreements, Islam will have no objection to any of these. No one can ignore the universal values that the Qur’an and the Sunnah have presented with regard to the rights mentioned above.”…
I have been advocating for democracy for decades. Having suffered through four military coups in four decades in Turkey — and having been subjected by those military regimes to harassment and wrongful imprisonment — I would never want my fellow citizens to endure such an ordeal again. If somebody who appears to be a Hizmet sympathizer has been involved in an attempted coup, he betrays my ideals.…
I condemn and reject any coup whatsoever. I deplore and reject any coup attempt as well. I would raise my arms and would stop them saying that “this is a dead-end”, even against considerations of a coup. This has always has been my general attitude; and my attitude will never change. If even the people who would like to drink my blood would come to the power through democratic elections, I would never consider or approve them being taken down through anti-democratic ways and methods. …
To many analysists and West Asia experts, the tension is much deeper. They view it as a rivalry between the political Islamism and the moderate and mystical narrative of the faith. Fathullah Gülen has written many articles and books in support of democracy, liberalism and pluralism. …
The importance of the ideas that the state favours — democracy, secularism and modernization — is recognized by Fethullah Gülen and he says he supports them. Why then is he being accused of being a threat to those ideas, and even accused of striving for an Islamic state?…
In Gulen’s approach to Islam, there is no place for a political organization. He is strongly against using services (Hizmet) as a means to gain worldly or political benefits. Gulen advocates understanding Islam as a religion with its basic precepts within the immutable framework.…
Although there are no legal obstacles for my return to Turkey, I am concerned that certain circles are waiting for an opportunity to reverse the democratic reforms that were started in the early 1990s and accelerated in the last decade. I have to sacrifice my intense desire to return to my homeland in the interest of both Turkey and the good work of volunteers of the (Gulen) movement around the world. …
institutions and actors continue to initiate new mediations of liberalism and Islam, even as they simultaneously remain subject to the powers of doubt and suspicion that liberalism engenders.…
Even though Hizmet views itself as a proponent of civil society, its work certainly has political ramifications. It is a faith-based movement, although scrupulous in presenting itself as having no religious agenda at all; it is strictly a civil society initiative.…
In addition, Fethullah Gülen is critical of the instrumentalization of religion in politics, and has no direct participation in party politics because the modern world exists in a pluralistic experience rather than within an assumed homogeneity of truth. He is against those who have created a negative image of Islam by reducing Islam to an ideology. Through words and deeds he underlines the distinction between Islam, a religion, and Islamism, a profoundly radical political ideology that seeks to replace existing states and political structures, either through revolutionary or evolutionary means.…
