Dr. Ihsan Yilmaz* Until the late 1970s and early 1980s, a relatively widespread consensus had existed in the sociology of religion discipline over the privatization of religion. Some scholars such as Jose Casanova have argued that during the course of…
LEONID R. SYKIAINEN Explaining the meaning of this principle for the modern Muslim world, Fethullah Gülen states that for the Muslims of today, consultation (shura) is a vital attribute and an essential rule, just as it was for the first…
Gulen never separates love of God from living a moral life. Sufism isn’t just for an elite; it’s for everyone. Gulen believes that Sufism offers a vision of how people of good will should and must act. He doesn’t want Sufism to be understood as a form of mysticism, as if the goal is to bask in God’s love without any implications for engaging in good works. Sufism entails constant self-renewal and self-purification that in Gulen’s words involves, among other things, Trying to eradicate injustice and support justice and what is right”…
From Gulen’s perspective; belief will lead to eternity. With belief, humans become an ocean while they are drops, they become whole while they are parts, they become a part of universe and then s/he becomes the heart of universe. Not only part of human beings but becomes part of universe, subsequently looks at all creation including environment as same thing who shared the same existence and birth like brothers and sisters. Then Muslims have strong conscious of looking after their own part/whole. This is also exemplified in one of the poets in Anatolia, Yunus Emre, he said ‘we love the created because of the creator’. Being a believer in God enforces Muslims to look after the environment.…
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…
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…
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…