Abstract
Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish Muslim scholar whose ideas have inspired and influenced many Turkish intellectuals, educators, students, businessmen, politicians and journalists inside and outside Turkey to establish schools, and educational and intercultural centres in more than 90 countries. After summarising some important features of globalisation briefly, this chapter provides brief biographical information about the life of Fethullah Gülen and then focuses on a general description of the movement and its main characteristic in the formation of an ideal person who is capable of internalising the qualities of self-discipline, dialogue and the notion of hizmet/khidmah (service for humanity). The question of how the formal and informal educational activities of the movement contribute to the solution of local and global problems is the second concern of this chapter. Finally, as an extension of the movement’s global educational activities, the chapter deals with Gülen’s approach to cultural and religious diversity and their relationship in modern societies.
This chapter is based on a previous draft paper presented at the Seventh Annual Conference of Globalisation for the Common Good: An Interfaith Perspective30 June–4 July 2008, Melbourne.
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Notes
- 1.
Gülen talks about a triangle (military camp, madrasah (school) and zawiyah (darwish lodge)), which students need for their proper training. Here the military camp represents discipline, the school represents scientific knowledge and the darwish lodge represents morality (and ethics) (Gülen, 1992).
- 2.
To see the result of this judgement, it is enough to look at gradual increase of armed conflict in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- 3.
It is important to note that today 80% of Internet content is in English. This is good for understanding each other but alarmingly dangerous for the preservation of local cultures and languages. A declining number of local languages in different parts of the world points to the power of globalisation. In the 1500s there were 14,000 languages spoken around the world, in 2000 we have approximately 7,000 languages (Steger, 2003). Clearly there is a diminished number of languages, and this decline is still in effect.
- 4.
Muslim countries constitute around 10% of total world trade. 2/3 (nearly 70%) of petrol is produced in Muslim countries but their income, with few exception, is very low. Among 50 Muslim countries, 24 have very low income, 13 have lower middle income and only 7 have upper and high income. The ten richest people in Great Britain have the equivalent wealth of 23 of the world’s poorest countries. The wealth of the three richest families in the world is equal to that of 600 million people living in the world poorest countries ( Mohammadi, 2002).
- 5.
I come across different naming of the movements in recently written books and articles. Some describe the movement as a civil-society, social conservative or Anatolian Islam of faith-based movement (Barton, 2005), pietistic activism (Özdalga, 2000), civil cosmopolitan movement, (Hendrick, 2006), while others name them as an ethic-oriented or text-based movement (Yavuz, 2003). There are others who describe the movement as educational Islamism (Agai, 2003), or a desecularisation and glocalisation or recularisation movement (Voll, 2003). I think none of these descriptions do justice to the broad definition of the movement. Gülen’s own definition ‘A movement originating its own model’ (Gülen, 2004).
- 6.
Every year many meetings are being held by teachers to develop and bring new material to their teaching. It is observed that the curriculum they use has never been static.
- 7.
- 8.
Nursi’s influence on Gülen in this regard is unlimited. Nursi places particular emphasis that Muslim–Christian co-operation was the result of many Prophetic reports that indicate that Muslims will enjoy peace with the pious Christians at the end of time. This unity will ensure security, and together they will fight against the common enemy, namely irreligiosity (Nursi, 1996; 1992). To encourage this common endeavour, Nursi re-formulates the expression ahl al-kitab (the People of Scripture or Book) as ahl al-maktab, which means ‘the Literate People’ (Nursi, 1993). This original re-interpretation should not be seen as a simple semantic contribution. Nursi, with utmost sincerity, calls the Christians the people literate in modern science, whose knowledge enables them to fight against the disbelief that stems from an extreme secularism rooted in modern science. Thus Nursi believes in close dialogue with Christians and thinks that real humanity, dignity and justice can only be established by a mutual understanding based on co-operation between these revealed religions.
- 9.
The Gülen movement finds this universal language. There is a very nice narrative from Mawlana’s Mathnawi to describe this situation. A man gave one coin to four men. One said ‘I will buy with this money an engur (which means grape). There was an Arab among them and he objected to buy engur (grape) but he wanted to buy ‘inab (which also means grape). The third one was a Turkish man and said this coin is mine and I did not want to buy ‘inab but I want to buy üzüm (which means grape). Finally, there was a Greek man who told them ‘leave all these things we just want to buy israfil (which means grape too)’. And then they started fighting each other. Mawlana says if there were a wise man who knew all these languages he would have solved their problem as long as they had accepted his authority.’ (Mevlana, 1990, II.283)
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Albayrak, I. (2010). The Gülen Educational Movement and Its Contribution to Global Peace and Tolerance. In: Engebretson, K., de Souza, M., Durka, G., Gearon, L. (eds) International Handbook of Inter-religious Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9260-2_46
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