Fethullah Gülen and the philosophy of happiness

Serdar Turgut

After I saw the schools founded by the Gülen community abroad, I thought about the major mistakes that have occurred in the history of our republic once again.

A person can’t help but wonder if the republican regime or secular civil society organizations could have done what the community has done when they had the chance to. People keep talking about the Gülen community’s financial resources. Didn’t the republican regime and secular forces have any money? Couldn’t big businessmen who were devoted to the republic and the secular system have been encouraged to lead these kinds of educational activities? Didn’t it occur to the state, government or political parties at all? Now that the community is doing this as a voluntary civil movement, they are getting upset. The main issue that is hardest to grasp is why this kind of system, which is so beneficial for Turkey, was not thought of and carried out by another group during the republican period. If one community has the means to do this, then most likely the Turkish state does, too. But undertaking this kind of tremendous task was not thought of or desired. The problem isn’t money; it’s the mentality.

Published on Today's Zaman, "Turkish Press Review" AKŞAM, 3/26/2010

Ottoman Dreaming: The Turks have new ambitions for trade and influence in Africa

Kinshasa & Yaounde

Mbombo Ibrahim Moubarak, an Islamic cleric who runs Cameroon’s Islamic humanitarian-assistance programme, has a dream. “Turkey must reclaim its mantle as leader of the Islamic world,” he said on March 17th, as Abdullah Gul became the first Turkish president to visit Cameroon and Congo. Mr Moubarak believes that Turkey’s brand of moderate Islam, which embraces Western-style democracy and the free market, offers a model for Africa’s Muslims. He sees nothing sinister about the mosques, madrassas and schools built, restored or run by Sunni Turks across the continent.

Quotes about Fethullah Gulen : By Michael David Graskemper from Harvard University, USA

Due to the spread and popularity of Gülen-inspired schools, the Gulen movement has become more than just a faith-based movement battling localized issues. It has instead become a world-wide educational movement that seeks to build a more peaceful world through dialogue and cooperation.

Quotes about Fethullah Gulen: By Prof. Paul Weller from University of Derby, Derby, UK

Prof. Paul Weller

It is precisely at this time of transition in the particular corner of the world that Fethullah Gülen's teaching can play such an important role. This is because Gülen is one “who knows how to argue the case on Islamic grounds” and thus to have the possibility to “redirect the religious fervour of hot-headed young men” from violent and near Manichean confrontationalism towards a self-critical renewal. Gülen's teaching is not ‘modernist’, and so it cannot, with integrity, be denounced as a ‘sell-out’ to secularism. Nor is it “reformist” in the sense that many mean by this.

Quotes about Fethullah Gulen: By Maria Maigre from London School of Economics, London, UK

Fethullah Gülen's cultural and religious influence on both the business and political classes within the Gulen movement has driven the moderation of political Islam and opened the way toward the integration into the new reality of globalization where the frontier between religion and business are blurred and those notions are brought together within a new conception of Culture.

Growing pains of Turkish democracy

Aydoğan Vatandaş

In a recent op-ed piece, “Turkey’s Republic of Fear” (March 4, 2010), Soner Çağaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), hurled cheap and unsubstantiated shots at Turkey’s current ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the moderate, pro-democracy Fethullah Gülen movement.

Gülen movement is a chance for humanity, American professor says

Today's Zaman


Prof. Jill Carroll

The Fethullah Gülen movement is a chance for humanity, Rice University Professor Jill Carroll said while speaking at a high-level conference in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on Saturday.

The Baltic Turkish Culture Academy and Vilnius Pedagogical University jointly organized a conference on Gülen and the Gülen movement’s ideas on dialogue and tolerance. Speaking during the conference, Carroll, who is the author of a book called “A Dialogue of Civilizations: Gulen’s Islamic Ideals and Humanistic Discourse,” said the Gülen movement is open to innovation and that dialogue has become part of the movement’s life. “The Gülen movement is a chance for humanity,” Carroll stressed.