Global Frontier to Relentless Action; a Piece of Mind about Gulen Movement

Sadık Çınar

As stated in BBC radio 4 programme we are now facing “most successful Islamic movement” or some might say “world’s best kept secret” namely Gulen or Hizmet movement. It is remarkable with its vision, activities and volunteerism. I would mention about Gulen Movement’s global frontier and relentless action. I chose these two because anyone who has overviewed the Movement notices these two characteristics at first snapshots.

Looking at activities over 130 countries in the world you can exactly say that this Movement is world phenomenon, not pursuing any country’s or religion’s interest and yet this is away from any kind of separation (religion, race, gender etc.). I would call this norm of the movement as “Global Frontier”. Gulen Movement has strong local activities in Christian world, Muslim world, white or black dominated societies, Turkic or non-Turkic countries.

If we look at the motives of this “Global Frontier” we come across the basic norms of the Movement which enlightens the actions of the movement and explains that action’s strategic importance in whole puzzle. You can easily associate every single action of the movement with at least one basic norms of the movement.

These global norms of the movement are:

1.Fighting with ignorance
2.Tackling poverty
3.Defeating disunity or separation.

These aims are related with the problems of vast majority of human beings in today’s world. Having these essential aims makes a movement global because contemporary world is like a global village and good or bad practices can easily spread. Countries become much interacted today. If you pursue a good cause you should pursue it everywhere. Bad practices easily reign over the settled, not-pursuing-good societies. Poverty is the same kind of problem as well. As we are facing in the EU countries, one countries economic deficiency spreads to the others in a blink of an eye. On the contrary developing countries help to its immediate neighbours at their initial economical squirms. We could finish this sub-heading by quotation from Gulen himself: “If you are not in everywhere you will be nowhere”

Every volunteer within the movement is aware of these “global norms” of the movement and affiliate his or her role perfectly with these norms. This awareness creates the moral satisfaction and keeps the inner motives alive all the time.

“Global Frontier” of the movement gave birth to the “Relentless Action” of the volunteers. These two subjects interlocked each other, without one the other becomes lacking and impossible. “Global Frontier” and “Relentless Action” forms fruitful circle, one nourishes the other.

Even in the founding stage of the Movement, even if the numbers of volunteers were handful, the Movement had global saying and aims (You can see in the early sermons of the Fethullah Gulen in 1970’s). This “Global Frontier” legitimises every effort (money, time, and manpower) and created strong motivation within volunteers. During financial difficulties of the Turkish Republic in 1990’s volunteers go far beyond the border of Turkish Republic and open schools, dialogue institutions and relief charities in Central Asia after that in Africa. They put huge effort on the projects of the Movement again directly related to the essential norms stated above. Movement’s institutions reached to thousands worldwide within 40 years. I believe this movement has breakthrough samples of the selfless effort and altruism in the human history.
 
Published on the author's personal blog, 17 July 2011, Sunday

Related Article: Global Frontier to Ceaseless Activism