The Gülen community, despite its relative youth, has developed a rich array of symbolic self-understandings and representations. This development of shared symbols and memories creates a sense of unity and collective identification beyond the interests and experiences of individual members.
What we essentially have with the hizmet movement is a globalization project centered on small- and medium-sized business and their families promoting through their dialogue and education initiatives an alternative Islamic globalization project centered on the idea of service in order to fight the three main enemies of humankind: poverty, disunity, and ignorance. In their own way, they thus counterbalance the more totalitarian visions of political Islam.
Taking the Gülen movement as a case study, this paper demonstrates how an Islamic movement engages with the West strategically and rationally, adopting a non-violent action repertoire, embracing modernity and operating predominantly within the cultural arena. Rather than adopting violence as a means to an end, the Gülen movement has turned its rejection of violence in all forms into a core feature of Gülen’s “Turkish Islam”, which is depicted as modern, peaceful, undogmatic and moderate.
The development of the Gulen movement, or Hizmet (service), as its followers prefer to call it, in the Netherlands reflects the evolution of the Turkish community in general. Initially this largely consisted of single men who were recruited as workers in low-wage sectors of the Dutch economy.
Helen Rose Ebaugh Scholars who study social movements agree that the elements of a movement must “incubate” for a while before it emerges into the public as a recognizable social movement. Because of his preaching and recorded messages, the ideas and inspiration of Mr. Gülen were becoming well known in Turkey by the early 1980s. […]
Doğu Ergil* Those who are within the Gülen Movement do not consider themselves the continuation or the extension of any other movement. At a certain time and under the perfect circumstances in Turkish History, the teachings of Gülen coincided with what a broad sector of Turkish society was searching for in their hearts. This is […]
Helen Rose Ebaugh The Gulen Movement emerged in late 1960s’ Turkey which had been struggling with social, economic and political problems that any nation state would face within its former years. Modern Turkey was established in 1923 by Kemal Ataturk and his colleagues on what was remained from the Ottoman Empire which disintegrated during the […]
Dr. Alp Aslandogan I would like to begin by thanking the Center for Strategic and International Studies for hosting this presentation and in particular Dr. Aliriza for his invitation and organizing this gathering. I also have a couple of disclaimers: First, I will not be speaking on behalf of any institution. The views presented here […]
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 […]
Mustafa Akyol In today’s Turkey Gülen movement represents an Islam, which is liberal and tolerant, which is in favor of the country’s EU bid and democratizing reforms. And this means that it is a “modern” movement. Yet this modernity has not been achieved by the authoritarian secularist policies of the state. It has been achieved […]
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