1.1 The Focus of the Book

This book focuses upon and explores the life and iterative development of the teaching and practice of Muhammed Fethullah Gülen—a traditionally trained Islamic scholar of Turkish origin from within the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam. From his life, teaching, and practice, many hundreds of thousands of Muslims and others have taken inspiration to engage in what those involved in it call Hizmet (a Turkish word hizmet, meaning service), which expanded initially across Turkey; into post-Soviet Central Asia and Europe; and also around the globe.

The book examines Gülen’s life and teaching in a highly contextualised way in relation to the social, historical, political, and religious environments in which he has lived and with which he has engaged. But in addition, as will become clear in the following chapters, it is also especially done through engaging with the impact of Gülen upon those inspired by his teaching and, in turn, their interactiveengagement with him and the further development of his teaching arising out of that. Thus, although sections of this book might seem to be as much about Hizmet as they are about Fethullah Gülen, this is because the book takes an approach that, just as Hizmet cannot be properly understood without an understanding of the person and teaching of Fethullah Gülen, so also Fethullah Gülen cannot be properly understood as an individual alone, but only contextually and interactively with Hizmet.

For those inspired by his teaching, and for many wider observers, Gülen’s teaching differentiates the rich traditional inheritance and spirituality of Islam from contemporary ‘Islamism.’ He advocates in word and deed for the central importance of education. He argues for engagement with science and the modern world, without being a ‘modernist,’ and he promotes the necessity of inter-religious dialogue without being a ‘liberal.’ Gülen is, however, also a figure around whom there has been considerable suspicion, contestation, and controversy, both within Turkish society and beyond. In the late 1990s, these suspicions coalesced into a legal process against him (Harrington 2011) on charges, citing video evidence, that he had been plotting to overthrow the secular state. These charges continued to be pursued after he had moved to the USA in 1999 and where, in the context of both this, and of health-related issues, he has lived ever since.

Although he was first acquitted from these charges in 2006 and then, again, on appeal in 2008, those in Turkey who have been suspicious of him have long characterised him as a threat to the secular state. The election of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or, in English, “Justice and Development Party”) to government in 2002 originally gave new opportunities to both pious Muslims in general and to Hizmet in particular as compared with what had been the case under the previous Kemalist hegemony. However, with the changing configurations of Turkish politics following the emergence in 2013 of corruption charges against leading figures in the ruling party and the government’s response to that in closing down Hizmet institutions, and especially its schools, Gülen became the target of personal attacks sponsored and/or supported by the current Turkish authorities.

Geographically speaking, during his life in Turkey, Gülen moved from his rural eastern Turkishorigins in Ezerun; to the Turkish-European western borderlands in Edirne; and then to the cosmopolitan cities of Izmir and Istanbul. In terms of political context, he experienced the radical fissures and upheavals of the Cold War period when Turkey often seemed to teeter on the brink of civil war between armed factions of the political left and right, resulting in militarycoups during which he became a wanted person.

The Hizmet movement inspired by him expanded into Europe and the Turkic Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union, and then globally. Following a period during which, in Turkey, there was a relatively close relationship between Hizmet and the AKP in terms of at least a confluence of perceived interest on some major issues (see Weller 2022, Sects. 4.1 and 4.2), from around 2013 onwards the current Turkish authorities increasingly accused Gülen and the Hizmet movement of having created what they identified under the derogatory and threatening name of the Paralel Devlet Yapılanması (PDY or, in English, “Parallel State Structure”).

Even more intensely, since July 2016, Gülen has been charged with being the leader of what the government identifies as Fethullahçı Terör Örgütü (FETÖ or, Fethullahist Terrorist Organization), claiming that Gülen and Hizmet were behind these events, which accusations they strongly deny. Also following the events of July 2016, The Presidency of the Religious Affairs of the Republic of Turkey (2017), the Diyanet, attacked Gülen in theological terms and charged him with being a “cult leader” (p. 5) who, over a number of decades, has “operated under the mask of an educator” (p. 7) and who takes “some of the concepts used in the Sufi tradition and employs them out of context to brainwash his followers” (p. 9).

In the light of all these developments, the Turkish state authorities have undertaken an almost complete dismantling of the network of Hizmet-related organisations within Turkey itself while imprisoning thousands of individuals, and pressuring governments in many other countries, either to hand over to the Turkish government or to shut down Hizmet-related initiatives such as schools, as in the case of the Hizmet Pak-Turk Schools in Pakistan.

Especially since July 2016, the US Government has also been under pressure from the Turkish Government to extradite Gülen himself. Issues related to this also became caught up in US political and public debate around the relationship between key figures in the former Trump administration and foreign governments, including allegations that General Michael Flynn had been involved in discussing a potential ‘rendition’ of Gülen to Turkey.

Therefore, in addition to scholarly interest in this figure in the areas of theology; Islamic/Muslim studies; Muslim hermeneutics; politics and international relations, given how the USA, Turkey, and many European countries are members of NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and especially bearing in mind Turkey’s Eurasian geopolitical context and significance, how this global figure and the movement inspired by him and his teaching emerged into global presence and influence and are now dealing with extra-territorial pressures from the current Turkish government and are charting a course for the future, is of considerable strategic import and broad public and current affairs interest.

Indeed, this book is published at a time that is pivotal for both Gülen and Hizmet who find themselves in a significant transitional period, in relation to both Turkey and the USA where he is currently based, but also because Hizmet’s previous profile and ways of operating in Turkey itself has effectively been strangulated, while also coming under economic, political, and religious pressure globally. Within the overall context of what this book and its companion volume (Weller 2022) identify as a ‘de-centring’ of Hizmet from Turkey, a more open self-criticism (see Sect. 5.4) has emerged within parts of Hizmet relative to its experiences in that country, and there has been a growing re-assessment by many associated with Hizmet about its future trajectory or trajectories.

1.2 A Religious Studies Approach

The disciplinary approach of Religious Studies provides the main framework for this study. Within this approach can be found what is known as the ‘insider-outsider’ problem in the study of religion (McCutcheon Ed. 1999) in which scholarly problems and opportunities are not seen as being exclusively associated with either ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ perspectives. Indeed, in contrast to much mainstream Sociology of Religion, where religions tend to be approached according to the kind of prior sociological theory adopted for understanding them, or of Theology, which usually entails the making and application of normative evaluative judgements, in the non-confessional study of religion known broadly as ‘Religious Studies,’ there has been a well-established tradition of a broadly phenomenological approach to the understanding of lived religion among individuals and groups (Smart 1973).

Although this overall approach has been critiqued (Flood 1999), its premise that, as far as possible, one should avoid moving too quickly into imposing one’s own interpretative (whether theological or sociological) framework without first having sought to understand phenomena as fully as possible in relation to how they present themselves remains an important one. Taking such an initial approach does not mean that one has completely to avoid the responsibility for making evaluative judgements. This is pertinent to how one approaches and understands the teaching and practice of Gülen not least since, as discussed in more detail both later in this chapter, and also in Sect. 6.1 of this book, there are widely differing evaluative judgements made in relation to his person. But it does mean acknowledging that, in understanding any phenomenon, including that of Gülen personally and that of Hizmet collectively, there is a need to take their self-understandings seriously even if ultimately bringing other evaluative and interpretive frameworks to bear upon them.

Inevitably, not everything can be perfectly or fully translated from one language to another, and one of the key issues that emerges in the book is the role that language, translation, and culture play in the hermeneutics of the contextual reception and further development of Gülen’s teaching. Nevertheless, as a starting point, a number of key terms and concepts within the book are referred to in their original Turkish form. This includes, for example, in relation to the person of Gülen, the use by some Hizmet-related interviewees of the Turkish honorific title hocaefendi (or Hojaefendi) that combines hoca (or hoja), referring to a teacher, and efendi, which signals a traditional respect for those who preach about Islam. In a publication such as this, which aspires to be an academically informed evaluation, the preference is to refer to him and discuss him simply by his civil family name rather than by using terminology that would inevitably be seen by one side of the debate or the other as either honorific or derogatory, although it should also be acknowledged that, among those inspired by him, it can be seen as discourteous simply to refer to him for conciseness, as is done in these books, as Gülen rather than, for example, as Mr. Gülen.

1.3 Situating in the Wider Literature

Not least because of the controversies that have developed around Gülen, it is important to situate this study of Gülen’s teaching and practice transparently within the wider literature about him, including the author’s own previous research and publications on Gülen and Hizmet. This includes two previously co-edited books on Hizmet, the first by Weller and Yılmaz (2012a), and which contained two co-authored chapters by the co-editors (Weller and Yılmaz 2012b, 2012c) and two chapters by the author (Weller, 2012a, 2012b); the second co-edited by Barton, Weller, and Yılmaz (2013a), and which contained two co-authored chapters by the co-editors (Barton et al. 2013b; Barton et al. 2013) and one chapter by the author (Weller 2013). In this field, the author has also published a co-authored booklet, Weller and Sleap (2014), as well as four single authored book chapters (Weller 2006, 2015a, 2015b, 2017), one of which specifically focused on the development of Hizmet in the UK. In addition, the author was Director of Studies for a University of Derby doctoral thesis discussing the Hizmet movement in relation to social movement theory written by Muhammed Çetin (2008) to whom this book is dedicated.

There is a large amount of literature on Gülen, his teaching and practice—let alone on the Hizmet that has been inspired by this, the latter literature for which is explored in greater detail in this book’s companion volume (Weller 2022, Sect. 1.3). Even prior to July 2016, Gülen and Hizmet were a focus of controversy as embodied and reflected in the wide range of publications which form part of the context for the debates that rage around them. Particularly, but not only, in the Turkish language there are a considerable number of publications, albeit of a more journalistic or popularist kind, that are fundamentally designed to attack and discredit Gülen, rather than to evaluate him and his teaching in a sober and properly critical way.

Doğan Koç’s (2012) book examines such literature from its earliest appearance in Turkish, in the early 2000s, up to the time of his book’s publication when such things were also increasingly appearing in English, especially online. In relation to such works, Koç highlights the different and sometimes mutually contradictory portrayals used in Turkish and English language publications. He explains that while some early Turkish examples of that literature charged that Gülen was intent on establishing an Islamic state to replace the Turkish Republic, by the end of the 1990s onwards, most were relying on the: “…image of the American puppet, the accusation that interfaithdialogue serves the Vatican, and the suggestion that Gülen’s alleged Zionism will subvert Islam” (p. 12), with some going even so far as to claim that Gülen is not even a Muslim and secretly works for the Papacy. In English language works of a similar character, Gülen is portrayed as an Islamic ‘Trojan Horse’ danger to the West, as being at one and the same time “anti-Western and anti-Semitic, and his promotion of tolerance, understanding and interfaithdialogue is simply meant to disguise his true intentions of establishing a secret caliphate” (p. 23) through the use of what in Arabic is known as taqiyya, or religiously sanctioned dissimulation.

In relation to how these tropes came into existence, operate and are spread, Koç points out that up to the time of his writing, “the Turkish defamations appear primarily in printed materials, such as books, magazines and newspapers, the English defamations appear almost exclusively online” (p. 54), with the latter facilitating rapid reproduction. From examining literature of this kind, Koç presents evidence that “One can predict how Gülen is defamed with a 87% accuracy only by looking at the language of the article, regardless of the authors” and that, therefore “The results suggest that Gülen is defamed strategically, not randomly” such that “The authors of such incendiary articles shape their depiction of Gülen according to the primary fears and suspicions of their particular audiences”. This analysis leads to the conclusion that: “Therefore the authors who wish to denigrate the work of Gülen and the Hizmet movement resort to these contradictory defamations and model their accusations on the primary fears of their audience rather than any gathered evidence.” (p. 36). As an example of such, Koç devotes a chapter (pp. 57–70) to analysing Rachel Sharon-Krespin’s (2009) article on “Fethullah Gülen’s Grand Ambition: Turkey’s Islamist Danger” and discusses evidence for that article’s pivotal role in the subsequent appearance of a much larger numbers of similar articles in English than was the case prior to it.

There is also a wide range of literature that reflects the sometimes quite radically different religious, political, and academic disciplinary approaches and evaluations of both Gülen and Hizmet. These include hundreds of journal articles, conference proceedings papers, and book chapters, as well as Masters’ and Doctoral theses, representing a variety of disciplinary approaches. A range of scholarly publications about Gülen is reflected in the Oxford University Press’ online bibliography of Muhammed Fethullah Gülen by Alparslan Açıkgenç (2011). However, since this was last updated only in 2011, its coverage is now somewhat dated. More recently, the scholar Karel Steenbrink (2015) wrote what he calls an introductory “bibliographical essay” on “Fethullah Gülen, Hizmet and Gülenists” (pp. 13–46), while a 2016 edition of the Hizmet Studies Review (linked with the movement-funded Gülen Chair at the Catholic University of Leuven, as discussed in Weller 2022, Sect. 3.4) was devoted to a Hizmet Index, 1996–2015.Footnote 1

An important part of the research project that underlies this book was the undertaking of a systematic review of research and other literature with which this volume and its companion volume engages. Indeed, the present author is currently working together with İsmail Şezgin on a ‘spin off’ annotated bibliographical project,Footnote 2 with the aim of creating a new and comprehensive annotated bibliography of publications on Hizmet and Gülen, initially in English and Turkish, but with the possibility of extending coverage also to other languages.

The previous section of this chapter noted the so-called ‘insider-outsider’ problem in the study of religion (McCutcheon ed. 1999). In relation to work by some Hizmet ‘insiders,’ Yavuz (2013) argues in a footnote that, “their works while informative tend to lack a critical edge” (p. 251). This debate is arguably further complicated by contention over the role and status of ‘external’ scholars who have presented papers at what Tittensor (2014) calls the “deeply problematic and ultimately counterproductive” flurry of “in-house books and conferences,” and which he sees as “little more than a public relations campaign that seeks to capture the field” (p. x).

Indeed, in a more recent book chapter on “Secrecy and Hierarchy in the Gülen Movement and the Question of Academic Responsibility,” Tittensor (2018) goes on to develop further his concerns in this regard referring to what he describes as “a major push by the GM to effectively co-opt Western scholars into writing ‘academic lite’ articles that overlook its more problematic aspects” (pp. 217–218). However, to put the specificity of this issue into some wider context, around two or three decades ago, similar debates took place in relation to the work of scholars working to understand the Unificationist movement and who took part in conferences out of which came related publications that were sponsored by that movement—the various dimensions of, and issues related to which, are discussed in a paper by one of those scholars, George Chryssides (2004) who reflects honestly that “The researcher’s role involves several areas of conflict, which are difficult, if not impossible, to resolve” (np).

Clearly, as with conferences in many disciplinary fields where scholars are given an honorarium for preparing and presenting a paper, there are ethical issues to consider in relation to expectation and independence. However, while respectful of Tittensor’s work on Hizmet, and understanding the potential grounds for his concerns, this author does not ultimately share Tittensor’s scepticism about the nature of such conferences or the value of the literature produced out of them. This is not only because of what could be seen as the potentially self-interested reason that the author’s two previous co-edited books on Hizmet originated largely from papers presented at movement-sponsored conferences, albeit that the ultimately published books and two of the book chapters were published by ‘mainstream’ scholarly publishers. Rather, it is that in the current book and its companion volume, all scholarly publications—including those published by publishers related to Hizmet and those published by commercial academic publishing houses; those written by ‘insiders,’ as well as those written by ‘outsiders’; those that aspire to objectivity and those which are clearly of a strong positionality—are all seen as offering different kinds of valuable insight into Gülen’s teaching and practice and how it is received by others, including by those that he, his person, teaching and practice has inspired.

Indeed, despite Tittensor’s (2018) strictures in relation to movement-funded conferences and publications, he concluded his own discussion of academic responsibility in relation to studies of Hizmet with the words, “I wish to stress that I am not seeking to impugn the scholarship or the place of insider research but simply counsel that it is important that scholars maintain a critical distance.” (p. 232). And in relation to such concerns, it is this author’s experience of participating in editorial work for Hizmet conferences that he has been freely able to review and score papers for inclusion or otherwise and also that, in the conferences it sponsors and in other ways, Hizmet has consistently given invitations to ‘outsiders’ to offer critiques with a consistency and to a degree that is not common among religious groups. For those of us who are outside Islam or Hizmet, the fact that we may not always take the opportunities afforded to us to make our honest, and including properly critical, input is not the fault of Hizmet, but is rather a matter of our scholarly and/or religious/ethical responsibility.

Of course, to operate in a way in which one can read and evaluate texts at multiple levels requires a methodologically sophisticated and critical hermeneuticalengagement with the texts concerned. In relation to the Hizmet movement, such a theoretical discussion linked with worked examples can be found in Florian Volm’s (2017) German language book, Die Gülen-Bewegung im Spiegel von Selbsdarstellung und Fremdrezption (or, in the author’s English translation of this, The Gülen Movement in the Mirror of Self-Representation and External Reception). Taking an approach of this kind, while no scholarly literature will be excluded from consideration in this book, there will be a transparent acknowledgement of both the locus and type of the publications concerned.

In considering published works in English with a specific focus on Gülen himself, as distinct from a discussion of the Hizmet inspired by his teaching and practicec, in particular with reference to the movement in Europe, is more the focus of this book’s companion volume (Weller 2022), it should be noted that a number of short biographies of Gülen exist (see Sect. 2.1). Some of these tend towards the hagiographical. However, Professor Jon Pahl of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia worked for some years on a more properly scholarly biography of Gülen, bringing to bear Pahl’s skills as an historian of religion. His book Fethullah Gülen: A Life of Hizmet was published in 2019 by the Blue Dome Press (a publishing house associated with the movement). Among other monographs coming from publishing houses connected with Hizmet and which focus on Gülen himself and his teaching are Carroll (2007); Albayrak (2011); Khan (2011); Ergil (2012); Kurt (2013); Wagner (2013); Grinell (2014); Dumanlı (2015); Mercan (2016); and Ashrati (2017).

The only scholarly single author book treatments in English that centrally focus on Gülen, his thinking, and practice, and which are published by publishing houses not associated with Hizmet, are Robinson (2017), which focuses specifically on the ethical aspects of his teaching; and Valkenberg (2015), which is a Christian theological evaluation of Gülen and his teaching. There is also Harrington’s (2011) discussion of the Turkish legal processes and trials around Gülen, and Koç’s (2012) previously mentioned discussion of defamatory works about Gülen. Other monographs which do discuss Gülen’s thinking, teaching, and practice, but do so in a way that ultimately focuses more on the movement he inspired include, for example, Yavuz’s (2013) seminal work, Towards an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement.

Closest to the current book, both because of their publishers, their focus, and their approaches, are the monographs above from Robinson and Valkenberg, while Pahl’s book is perhaps the closest of all in terms of substance. As with the current book and its companion volume (Weller 2022), and in contrast to much academic work on Gülen coming from a more sociological and especially politicalscience disciplinary perspective, Robinson, Valkenberg and Pahl’s books emphasise, the fundamentally religiousnature of Gülen and his teaching.

Alongside these authored and edited books are many hundreds of journal articles and book chapters representing a variety of disciplinary approaches and evaluative stances in relation to Gülen and Hizmet. From among these, one new edited collection of book chapters should be particularly noted—both because of its publication following July 2016 and also because of the critical (albeit varied) perspectives it contains on the question of the involvement or otherwise of the Gülen and the Hizmet movement in those events. This is Turkey’s July 15th Coup: What Happened and Why?, edited by Hakan Yavuz and Bayram Balcı (2018), albeit that the essays in it are more concerned with Turkey than directly with Gülen’s teaching.

In addition to all the above publications there is, of course, also a range of other publications, from magazine through to newspaper articles which also form part of the context for the debates that rage around this Turkish and global figure and the movement inspired by him. Since these in themselves form part of what might be called relevant “social data,” they will also be taken account of and engaged with where appropriate, albeit also on a basis informed by transparency concerning their locus and modes of production.

1.4 Evidence, Aims, and Methods

Research and scholarship undertaken into movements and people subject to religious and political contention can be subject to many challenges, some of which are informed by real issues; while others can be more to do with perceptions, whether accurate or inaccurate; and still others (including also among scholars) can be the product of ideological or prejudicial stances in relation to which there has been insufficient reflexive and self-critical awareness.

In the Preface to his book on Hizmet, Tittensor (2014) explains his aim to “make a serious empirical contribution” that provides “insight into the lived realities of those that work within the movement and those that are touched by it” (p. x). By gathering primary research data through interviews with Gülen and his close associates this book, like Tittensor’s, aims also to provide such empirically informed insight into the lived realities of Fethullah Gülen, those who have been close to him and others who have been inspired by him.

Alongside being able to draw upon two decades worth of informal knowledge of, and conversations and interaction with those associated with Hizmet, this was achieved by means of conducting twenty-nine semi-structured in-depth narrative interviews which, through participants’ stories, collated evidence of underpinning cultural milieux, social contexts, and personal attitudes. One limitation of the fieldwork, and therefore potential criticism of the book that must be acknowledged and taken seriously, is that the vast majority of the formal interviews that inform this book took place with men. This partly reflects the reality that, as discussed in Weller 2022, Sect. 5.7, Hizmet is still quite strongly reflective of patriarchy in terms of both its Turkish and Muslim heritages. When coupled with the choice made to give significant voice to those who have been Fethullah Gülen’s historically close associates and to interviewees in Europe who have had public roles within Hizmet-related groups (primarily on the grounds that in the post-2016 context interviewees already known to be publicly aligned with Hizmet might be less hesitant to go on the record) this inevitably had further gender-related consequences.

Recognising the gender balance limitations of the interviews, the author has tried in terms of other published sources, to pay special attention to those that concern the position and perspectives of women within the movement (for example: Curtis 2010, 2012; Hassencahl 2012; Pandaya 2012; and Rausch 2012, 2014). Nevertheless, despite these mitigating factors, it remains the case that it is likely that both companion volumes will, in due course, need complementing, critiquing, and quite probably correcting by primary interviews with emergent women leaders in Hizmet, and also by more conscious and systematically applied specifically feminist perspectives and approaches, some work on which has been commenced, among others, by Raja (2013) and Fougner (2017).

Despite these acknowledged limitations, it is to a large degree the raw nature of the contributions made by interview participants, and who in this book are frequently ‘given voice’ directly in quotations, as well in summarised form, that brings a particular focus and power to the wider discussions of the book. Of course, when it comes to a more analytical consideration of the raw interview data and observations of the researcher, neither can straightforwardly and without qualification be taken as having any especially privileged status that is not itself subject to further analysis. Therefore, as a matter of transparency, it should be stated that this research was conducted in the course of the author’s employment at Regent’s Park College in the University of Oxford. It was funded through charitable donations made for this purpose to the College by anonymous donors and channelled via the Dialogue Society, a UK registered charity (No. 1117039) which, on its website, acknowledges its inspiration from Gülen.Footnote 3 The Dialogue Society therefore has had a material interest in this book and research that lies behind it. That interest was also represented in the project’s reference group, of which some representatives of the Dialogue Society were a part, along with senior scholars from the College.

However, in relation to research on religion (as in other fields) in a university context, it is quite possible to have an ultimate funding source for research that may or may not have expectations for, and/or be welcoming or not of the work that is actually produced, while having confidence in the academic integrity and rigour of the publication and its underlying research. In contrast with consultancy, in which the integrity of the research depends on the nature of the contractual relationship that is directly between the commissioner of the research and the person, persons or company that conducts it, higher education institutions have systems in place that control for potential challenges to the integrity of externally funded research, and the funders of research who work through higher education institutions accept such controls.

In this instance, the funding agreement with the College for the research included a clear statement relating to the College’s academic independence and the author’s academic freedom, thus safeguarding the independence, integrity, and results of the project. In addition, the project went through a rigorous research ethics scrutiny and approval process at the University of Oxford, as one of the world’s leading research universities, and which took account of the University’s Conflict of Interest policy. Within these processes, the funding source and arrangements governing the research were made transparent and the approaches to be taken to the research were set out and discussed in a detailed way, resulting in the formal ethical approval that undergirds the rigour and integrity of the research.Footnote 4

However, it remains the case that those who conduct research and write for publication are necessarily affected by their disciplinary, religious, and civil society backgrounds and commitments. Transparency in relation to such is particularly important when research deals with individuals and groups that have been the focus of controversy. In this case, it should therefore be made clear that the author works broadly in the study of religion rather than that of politicalscience, the latter of which, along with sociology, are the disciplines from within which many scholars have hitherto approached these matters. When dealing with phenomena which, at the least, present themselves to others in terms of a religiousinspiration, the epistemological presuppositions and social understandings that the researchers inevitably bring to their disciplines and the subject matter of their research entail both potential benefits and limitations. One of the lessons that has been pressed home by, among others, advocates of feminist and decolonising epistemologies and methodologies is that, however rigorously scholars seek to operate within their disciplinary norms, neither they nor their disciplinary traditions are neutral—even, and perhaps are especially not so, when they purport to be.

Thus, in terms of personal positionality it should be acknowledged that the author is a religious believer and practitioner, albeit within (the Baptist tradition of) Christianity rather than within Islam. Thus, for all that it is the case that the research lying behind this book and its companion volume draws on social scientific methodologies and literatures, informed by over two decades of personal knowledge of, and interaction with, Hizmet and an extensive engagement with the literature about Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet, it is ultimately the author’s professional judgement that, in order to understand Fethullah Gülen and Hizmet in as fully an adequate a way as possible, one needs to recognise and to acknowledge the primarily religious register in which they at least understand themselves to be operating.

According to the African scholar, Achille Mmembe (2016), it is both possible and important to work within a “a process of knowledge production that is open to epistemic diversity” (p. 37). At the same time, in advocating this, Mbembe is quick to anticipate the critique that such an approach might lead to an epistemological, cultural, and ethical relativism by arguing that such an approach “does not necessarily abandon the notion of universal knowledge for humanity,” but rather that pluriversity itself embraces the possibility of a universal knowledge for humanity “via a horizontal strategy of openness to dialogue among different epistemic traditions” (italics in the original).

In terms of the relationship between one’s position and approach as a scholar and one’s engagements and responsibilities as a citizen, the author should also acknowledge both currently being—and also having been for a number of years—a member of the Board of Advisors of the Dialogue Society. A readiness to act in such a capacity is, of course, distinct from being in membership or having similar categories of direct personal alignment. Nevertheless, readiness to act in this capacity signals the fact that, evaluatively speaking, overall the author takes a critically sympathetic approach to the practice of Hizmet and the teaching of Fethullah Gülen. It also means that, in addition to any ways in which one’s academic work may impact upon and influence the development of Hizmet, that in the context of the Board of Advisors role the present author has, on occasion, either individually and/or as part of the wider Board, made recommendations to it on matters that are discussed later in this book, including that of transparency around the inspiration for the Dialogue Society’s work as having been drawn from the person and teaching Fethullah Gülen (Weller 2022, Sect. 5.4), and encouragement to the Society to engage with other organisations of Muslim inspiration (Weller 2022, Sect. 5.6).

Such a role also enables the possibility of having an awareness of, and perhaps more access to, some important and sometimes sensitive internal discussions and debates. At the same time, ethically, it is important to differentiate such informal knowledge from data that is collected when one is acting formally as a researcher which is only used here within the principles and practice of ‘informed consent.’

Finally, in the light of a note on the Turkishinvitations website that “there is no such thing as a free Turkey trip,”Footnote 5 the author should also acknowledge that, in 2008, he also took part in a study visit to Turkey and Hizmet institutions there at the invitation of the UK’s Dialogue Society. Nevertheless, as with the author’s previously noted experience concerning Hizmet-sponsored conferences, participation in such a trip certainly did not preclude the asking of sharp and robust questions. Details of some of those that were posed by the author in an 18 July 2008 paper, circulated to participants as part of the preparations for the trip, are set out in detail in Sect. 6.1 of this book.

As Tittensor (2014) acknowledged when arguing for the importance of trying to make an empirically based contribution, his approach was also “not value-neutral” (p. x). In all of this, therefore, awareness of oneself and transparency before others is the main means by which there can be control for potentially illegitimate bias. This is, in turn, a part of what the widely acknowledged parent of the discipline of Religious Studies, Ninian Smart (1973), used to called the importance of “axioanalysis” in the study of religion. Of this, he argued that particularly in relation to any attempt at a cross-cultural approach to religion, one “should stimulate some degree of self-awareness. It is as though we should undergo axioanalysis – a kind of evaluational equivalent to psychoanalysis: what has been called more broadly ‘values clarification’. Or perhaps we might call it ‘own-worldview analysis.’ ” (p. 265). Especially in such hotly debated areas as those that are under discussion in this book, both contributors to the research, and researchers themselves are inevitably also actors in a social process.

In relation to this, HE1 (see Acknowledgements), an anonymous interviewee publicly associated with Hizmet in Europe, said, “For me it was really a good reflection,” commenting further that he otherwise “didn’t have time for.” Finally because of the extensive number of imprisonments without trial, deprivation of employment and assets, and actions pursuing guilt by mere association with Fethullah Gülen and/or Hizmet which followed the July 2016, in contrast with Tittensor’s (2018) counsel that “it is important that scholars maintain ‘a critical distance’ ” as between “two polar-opposite narratives” (p. 232) of what “actually transpired” (p. 218), there is at least a case that one might argue that such a context calls rather for scholars to be ready to take the risk of adopting a clear overall position in terms of becoming consciously (rather than, in any case actually being so, but unconsciously) a social actor in relation to the human issues at stake.

Adopting such a conscious position of scholar as also social actor entails a readiness to accept the responsibility that in doing so, it is in principle possible that one’s evaluations and associated choices might be wrong. Therefore, in moving beyond critical distance alone and incorporating positionality in a way that is academically and ethically responsible, this can only be attempted on the basis of being as informed as possible through aspiring to gain as much empirical insight as possible into lived realities of what is being researched, alongside being as self-aware as possible of one’s own value and epistemologicalpositionalities through the application to oneself and one’s academic approach of a rigorous axioanalysis.