Abstract
The revival in Islamic studies of interest in explaining social transformation in Muslim societies has stimulated a need for new methodological inquiries. The deployment of informal institutions within daily life is also a rediscovery of the traditional Islamic networks, patterns, values and cognitive forms. The rise of daily life as the major unit of operation for the new Islamic movements directs them to a completely different position vis-a-vis modernity: to create an alternative Islamic civil society, that is indifferent to the existing modern one. The Gulen Movement, with its success at creating trans-national networks, is the perspicuous case for illustrating the amodern world view of new Islamic movements. Study of the Gulen Movement on the basis of its amodernity is a methodology that contributes also to the study of how Islam is reproduced in daily life despite modern challenges. Such a study makes a necessity, in any research agenda, of the acknowledgement of the amodern in the sociology of religion. The major contribution of this paper is to display how Islamic movements develop an irregular position towards modernity. Therefore, the validity of traditional binaries, such as ‘Islamic movements vs. modernity’, or ‘Islamic movements as products of modernity’, has to be questioned. Being indifferent to the state and operating through daily life, new Islamic movements gain the ability to connect with historical Islam, the roots of which had fixed well before those of modernity.
Keywords: Islam; amodernity; the Gulen movement; informalism
The revival in Islamic studies of interest in explaining social transformation in Muslim societies has stimulated a need for new methodological inquiries. The binary of Islam and civil society, a repeated thesis, has taken the study of Islam out of the civilian domain and juxtaposed Islamic movements and states (Gellner 1996). However, recent studies, Turkish ones especially, have concluded that Islamic movements are successful without any state agenda. Accordingly, new Islamic movements base their ‘mobilisation strategy on transforming everyday practices’ rather than following the former Islamist way of developing political agendas (Tuğal 2009). The focus on daily life reminds the strategic role of informal networks. New Islamic movements, as the agents of daily life, operate mainly through informal networks. This results in a perception of informal institutions as functional or problem solving and entails a recognition of their positive role in providing solutions to the various problems of social interaction (Halmke and Levitsky 2004). Indeed, the new Islamic movements’ informalism is a deviation from the hallmarks of modern society, such as calculability, formalism and the separation of the market and the state (Misztal 2000). The deployment of informal institutions within daily life is also a rediscovery of the traditional Islamic networks, patterns, values and cognitive forms. Thus, the rise of daily life as the major unit of operation for the new Islamic movements directs them to a completely different position vis-a-vis modernity: to create an alternative Islamic civil society, that is indifferent to the existing modern one. In the past, some radical Islamists had completely rejected modernity. Others, paradoxically, modernised part of their political agenda to sympathise with the state and nationalism. However, the new Islamic movements ply their mobilisation strategy in daily life contexts and situate themselves in an irregular position to modernity. Their amodern (neither modern nor anti-modern) position creates its own parallel sphere founded on the traditional patterns of Islam.
The Gülen Movement, with its success at creating trans-national networks, is the perspicuous case for illustrating the a modern world view of new Islamic movements. Fethullah Gülen is an influential Islamic scholar whose ideas activate millions not only in Turkey but also around the globe (Yavuz and Esposito 2003; Ünal 2000). His Movement is described as ‘the largest Islamic movement in Turkey and the most widely recognised and effective one internationally’ (Turam 2004, 265). This Movement is successful at deploying its discursive and material instruments in a number of countries, among them are the ones as different as Thailand and Macedonia (Sevindi and Abu-rabi’ 2008). How can this Movement activate large masses and realise complex trans-national projects, both of which require sophisticated discourse, persuasion, planning and other social and material procedures? The study of the social dynamics through which the Gülen Movement operates is the natural unit of analysis for any inquiry that seeks an answer to such questions.
‘Movement’ studies provide a wide of range of theories to explicate the successes of social movements, as well as their transformation and decay. This paper proposes that it is mainly the amodern trait of the Gülen Movement, particularly evident in its engagement with religion-based networks that makes this Movement globally successful. ‘Amodern’ refers to the traditional networks, symbols, values, institutions, patterns and cognitive forms that pre-date modernity, yet retain the capacity to be effective among people, and for that reason, the ability to transcend the separated forms of modernity.
Study of the Gülen Movement on the basis of its amodernity is a methodology that contributes also to the study of how Islam is reproduced in daily life despite modern challenges. Beyond the traditional debate about Islam and modernity, a critical point of analysis is how Islam preserves its traditional forms of identity, legitimacy and cognitive models in their traditional patterns. That is, study of the Gülen Movement reveals the details of how new Islamic movements operate in daily life and how they activate the traditional informal networks. Such a study makes a necessity, in any research agenda, of the acknowledgement of the amodern in the sociology of religion. The major contribution of this paper is to display how Islamic movements develop an irregular position towards modernity. Therefore, the validity of traditional binaries, such as ‘Islamic movements vs. modernity’, or ‘Islamic movements as products of modernity’, has to be questioned. Being indifferent to the state and operating through daily life, new Islamic movements gain the ability to connect with historical Islam, the roots of which had fixed well before those of modernity.
Presenting a profile of the Gülen Movement
The significance of the Gülen Movement that has attracted the most scholarly attention is its development of certain networks that transcend national boundaries (West 2006, 284). More critical than its global presence as an institution is the Movement’s capacity to recognize local actors in extra-national contexts. The Movement is not chary of expanding its societal basis. Rather, it sees enlargement as a major networking strategy (Özipek 2010). ‘Recruitment’ is not the adequate term for characterising the link between a social movement and people, for participation in such a movement takes place in various ways (Ebaugh 2009). (Creating alternative forms of participation is a serious indicator of the societal capacity of a social movement.) How a movement activates the large masses beyond the recruited circle is also a vital area of study. The Gülen Movement is not recruitment based; rather, it lives freely with the unclear boundaries between itself and the relevant segments of any society. For example, in Madagascar, we observed that families are active parts of the Gülen schools’ administration. As local agents, they appropriate the mission of fulfilling certain official undertakings. Even the persuasion of other local people is to a large extent the work of these local participants. There is almost no boundary between the functionaries of the Movement (i.e. teachers and others sent from Turkey) and the local people. Similarly, the functionaries of the Movement are very disposed to learn about and participate in the local culture (Esposito and Yılmaz 2010). They accept the existing culture as it is and promote intercultural marriages.1 In the end, the Movement’s activities become a complex process of trans-national interventions.
Bayram Balcı gives an account of how this transnational chain is created in the case of Tashkent, a Central Asian city. This account carefully inspects the Movement’s ability to form trans-national bonds:
Businessmen from a particular city in Turkey, for example Bursa, will decide to concentrate their efforts on a particular Central Asian city, for example Tashkent. Nurcu [the Gülen movement] investment will then become important in Tashkent, and a kind of twinning between the two cities results. Nurcu group members are sent by the movement with the aim of making contact with important companies, bureaucrats and personalities in order to appraise local needs. They then invite some of these important personalities to Turkey. Some vakıf [foundation] and other Nurcu organizations receive them and show them the private schools and foundations of the cemaat [community], without ever mentioning this word. Thanks to these contacts it then becomes easy to prepare the work in Central Asia. The network of important personalities established in Central Asia has been crucial for the community. With their help, the cemaat has been able to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles encountered by every foreigner working to invest there. After their arrival in each country, thanks to their contacts, the representatives of the cemaat are given permission to take over an old school and to transform it. The new school will remain under the control of the state, which helps to maintain it, paying for such things as gas, water and electricity. All the other expenses, for books, tables, computers, laboratories and so on, are met by the Turkish companies. (Balcı 2003, 154–5)Balcı’s model typifies how the Movement leads its followers to aim for the transnational goal. But the Movement has a variety of strategies beyond the ones he has observed. Balcı can be faulted for missing the societal aspect and for failing to note that the role of ‘important personalities’ may not be as critical in the less authoritarian countries as he deems. These concerns notwithstanding, Balcı gives a successful account of how the Movement acts in the complex process in which its trans-national interventions take effect. This process has demanding phases, such as the persuasion of people in Turkey to spend their money abroad, the persuasion of teachers to work abroad, the persuasion of the local (outside Turkey) people and the creation of effective structures of interaction through which the essentials of legitimacy and information are transmitted.
Amodernity as a research agenda
It is a modern intellectual habit to insinuate that there is an impeccable match between modernity and the social world. Where an incongruity surfaces, it is dismissed as anti-modern and sometimes even with the pejorative ‘primitive’. The traditional epistemic and cognitive forms have been eliminated (Wittrock et al. 2001). The traditional, i.e. non-modern, forms are labelled as strangers (Bauman 1997, 18). However, in the case of Islam, there are major cognitive processes, behavioural patterns and legitimisation procedures that have their origins in earlier ages, and continue to exist outside the precepts of modernity. Therein lies its amodern character. The modernist argumentation, which depends on a perfect match between modernity and social phenomena, is subject to invalidation by the observable continuity of forms inimical to it, one of those forms being Islam.
Reductionist assumptions about the complicated relationship between religion and modernity are not readily tenable. The Islamic world’s experience with modernity cannot be ignored. Yet the historically new layer of modernity cannot erase the basis of traditional Islam. That basis survives in its amodern format. Despite the pervasive nature of modernity, the Islamic world retains strong, effective informal networks that connect Muslims around the globe. Their rejection by the modernising élite does not bring an end to them.
A particular feature of modern social formations is the articulation of social and other phenomena as ‘distinct, clearly demarcated zones’ (Bauman 1991, 29). As Bauman (1991) says, modernity attempts to remove uncertainties and unknowns with the rational categories it creates. Its apparently manageable categories lend modernity the appearance of solidity and facilitate its centralisation (Lee 2005). However, facing down modernity’s hegemonic claim to having centralised everything is the tradition that asserts that truth is ‘an irreducibly complex, multi-layered architecture structure’ that is not completely understood in the rational boundaries of modernity (Plotnitsky 2006, 42). Like truth, a social phenomenon is complex, and it is hardly possible to grasp all its dynamics with modernist categories alone. This tradition, which can be called amodern, attempts to analyse a subject matter in ways that are non-dualistic. It argues that our key meta-theoretical assumptions about reality, agency, ethics and politics have to be adjusted by amodern philosophical inquiry that is not within, nor even against, the philosophical frameworks of modernism and post-modernism, but outside them (Wiley 2005).
A binary reading of ‘amodern’ and ‘modern’ is not correct, for there is no conceptual relationship between them. Amodern is indifferent to modern. There is a clear continuum on the intellectual spectrum of pre-/post-/anti-modern and modern. But there is no continuum that relates amodern and modern. Amodern is not even anti-modern. In other words, ‘modern’ is the point of departure of all pre-/post-/anti-modern conceptualisations; the point of departure of ‘amodern’ is itself. Therefore, modernity is neither central to nor determining of the procedures or philosophical content of amodernity. ‘Amodernity is neither antimodern nor anti-progressive in that it is neither destructive nor counterproductive’ (Trafton 2008, 4). It is not interested in the ‘rational order’ of modernity (Trafton 2008, 5). Amodernity rejects modernity’s historiography as pre-modern and asserts that there always were traditions other than the one from which modernity developed.
The critique of modernity from this perspective, although not popular, is not absent from the literature. This is the critical approach that is necessary for displaying how Islam reproduces its traditional/amodern patterns. Gilles Deleuze’s works can be studied as a prelude to the tracing of the facets of the philosophical discussion of modernity in Western literature. Deleuze diverted from the rationalist tradition of Plato, Descartes, Kant and Hegel and turned to figures such as Lucretius, Spinoza, Hume, Nietzsche and Bergson (Sellars 2007). This diversion represents the existence of a ‘heterodox ontological tradition over the orthodox Aristotelian tradition’ (Hammer 2007, 69). This perspective reminds us that there is a tradition of thought other than that from which modernity arose. The genealogy of that other tradition of thought is narrated by reference to the philosophers just cited, who take a stand against Kantian modernity, the orthodox tradition (Kerslake 2004). The monist ontology of the former pits itself against the dualist ontological paradigm (Wiley 2005). Deleuze is at odds with the Kantian tradition that has yielded the ‘modern constitution of truth’ (Latour 1990, 154).
Deleuze argues that knowledge should incorporate dynamic reality and all its changing aspects (Pearson 2007, 63). He renounces the Hegelian approach in which difference is seen as dialectically determined. He takes issue with the Kantian distinction between phenomena and noumena. His line of reasoning ‘operates according to the logic of nextness or juxtaposition’ (Wiley 2005, 70). Deleuze is a Bergsonian inasmuch as he posits the ungovernable continuities of social and natural phenomena. According to Bergson, the sciences are closed systems with a logic of definable and isolatable terms. These systems themselves obstruct the sciences’ view of the ‘continuities and connections’ that are impossible to demarcate according to rational boundaries. Science undervalues ‘continuities and connections between things’ in order to ‘focus on measurable data’ (Grosz 2005, 9). For Bergson, art is better able to perceive the continuities and generalisation-evading singularities of natural and social phenomena (2005, 4). Following Bergson, Deleuze also avoids ‘units, entities or terms’; instead, his ontology is the ‘movement beyond dualism, beyond pairs, entities or terms’ (2005, 6). He emphasises that ‘dualism is what prevents thought’, for thought is a process (Deleuze 2001, 95). Taking Bergson’s ‘duration’, he proposes that ‘mind and matter, life and matter, rather than binary terms, are different degrees of duration, different tensions, modes of relaxation or contraction, neither opposed nor continues’ (Grosz 2005, 7). Thus, in Deleuze’s amodernity, the real is dynamic, open ended, everchanging, which gives the impression of ‘stasis and fixity only through the artificial isolation of systems, entities or states’ (2005, 11). Modernity presents a misleading, or incomplete, picture by introducing boundaries and categories. The Bergsonian concept of the universe is the enduring whole in which not a moment of fixation is possible. Deleuze’s universe, too, has no fixed centre. On this perspective, the central role of man as the determiner of all meaning becomes obsolete (Lumsden 2002, 143). The constantly proliferating nature of the rhizome, which always changes direction, is the metaphor that depicts the de-centred Deleuzian amodernity (Perry 1983). To conclude, Deleuze’s conceptualisation questions modernity’s arrogance in making crystal clear propositions (Kaufman 2007).
Deleuze’s works are of methodological significance in any study that observes the limits of modernity’s capacity to recognise continuing and complex phenomena. A major problem of modern science is how to recognise (or identity) the rhizome-like continuity of phenomena in social and natural life. This problem is the likely cause of the neglect of the traditional informal forms in social life. Modernity’s monopolistic enchantment does not originate from its perfection; it stems from the power of its two major agents: the modern state and modern science. This brings us to the simple conclusion that there is a need for the recognition of existing alternative behavioural and cognitive procedures. A critical reading of modernity like Deleuze’s is essential for revealing the traditional networks that propel the new Islamic movements as agents in daily life. Otherwise, the typical modernist Islam vs. modernity, or the reverse, binary will remain with us to obscure our view of on-the-ground actuality.
The roots of amodernity in Gülen
Two major areas are particularly important in searching for the roots of amodernity in Gülen: his early socialisation in a traditional Islamic milieu and his education in the traditional madrasa system. On these two facts, Gülen is the product and continuation of the traditional Islam that perpetuates itself through informal and civil mechanisms. Socialisation in such an environment was for him formative, particularly of his capacity to be an effective agent who utilises certain amodern networks and patterns.
Fethullah Gülen was born in 1941 in Erzurum, Turkey, a conservative environment that affected him in major ways. The religious values and customs of his social milieu had his family fully engaged, so, despite the radical secularisation trends of the late 1930s, his early socialisation was completed in a traditional religious environment. This should be seen as the foundation of his daily practices centred approach to religion. Erzurum, located in the very peripheral Eastern part of Turkey, was isolated from the radical modernising reforms of the 1930s. Traditional Islamic culture still dominated daily life in this area.
Mardin (2003) called ‘daily Islam’ that traditional religious environment in which daily life is arranged around the observance of Islam. The authority of Islam in such an environment is in that it is embedded in what people ordinarily do. As such, Islam is more than a religion; it is a social identity. Alternately, as Vicini (2007, 436) later described it, it is as sanctification of daily life. The experience of living Islam in daily life marks the difference between ‘daily Islam’ and ‘political Islam’. Gülen, unlike many modern Islamic leaders, would never target modernity’s institutions, such as the state. His Islam is essentially the ‘daily Islam’ that people live. That leaves him indifferent to modern institutions, including the state. Accordingly, the power and transformative effect of Islam is in that it is embedded in the apolitical, routine practices of daily life
Though hidden and unofficial, Erzurum had a well-established madrasa system in the late 1940s. Gülen learnt basic Islamic sciences in those circles, where important traditional ulema taught as Alvarlı Lutfi, Molla Halil, Vehbi Efendi, Sırrı Efendi, Şehâbeddin Efendi, Sadi Efendi (Erdog˘an 2006). None of these scholars formulate their teachings as modern texts. Instead, they articulate their ideas according to the traditional Islamic methods. Gülen’s attachment to the historical Islamic literary tradition was nurtured by such scholars. This, no doubt, equipped him with the discursive capacity with which he engaged Islamic networks around the globe. His traditional education enabled him to use the epistemic, structural and social components of Islam as they are practised in different cultures. Unlike modernised Islamic scholars’ texts, the accent of this traditional education is on the method-based (usul) studies that prioritise the reach of the Islamic code and values into civil and social bodies. The corpus of Islamic literature assigns not government but the alim (scholar) as the main agent of the preservation of this tradition. The high issues of the modern agenda, including that of the state, have never dominated the Islamic literary tradition. Gülen was taught not to formulate his assumptions on the centrality of the state, but on that of the people who form its society.
Having such a background, Gülen’s association with Said Nursi (1874–1960) was not surprising. Never involved in daily politics, Nursi’s teachings stressed the individual’s faith as the most important value. His philosophical debates concentrate on man’s position and responsibilities in the universe. Nursi sought to formulate an Islamic philosophy to challenge the epistemological basis of positivism, which he declared the most dangerous enemy (Nursi 2008a). To him, the important task was to refute the philosophical basis of positivism. He saw no point in political debate.
Nursi’s attack was directed at modernity. Modernity’s monopolisation of science and its atheistic interpretations were Nursi’s two major targets. He formulated his ideas within the classical Islamic tradition, which, of course, is hugely at variance with the modern scientific paradigm. (Nursi’s apolitical and traditional methodology strengthens Gülen’s practice-based social interpretation of Islam, which he acquired during his own early socialisation. Gülen, like Nursi, believes that the effective strategy is to create an Islamic milieu in which the individual plays the key role. Rather than correct modernity like Nursi, another major method of Gülen’s is to revitalise the Islamic literary tradition and let it run parallel with the ongoing modernity project.)
Nursi’s main activism was writing his almost 6000 pages of Risale-i Nur, an exegesis of the Koran. Risale-i Nur is not a modern text. It is written in accordance with a heavily traditional Islamic methodology. In line with the classical Islamic literary tradition, Risale-i Nur does not pay any serious attention to politics, the state or international relations, nor to the modern divisions in social life. Referring to the interrelatedness of social and natural phenomena, Nursi emphasises the importance of the reflection of Islam upon daily life through traditional Islamic values. Nursi almost completely ignores the boundaries of modernity. He writes from a very monist perspective on which social and natural phenomena are presented as closely connected. By positing God’s creation as the determiner of the connection of social and natural phenomena, Nursi – reminding of Bauman – philosophically challenges the boundaries that modernity asserts (Nursi 2008b). Nursi was not an activist. He spent most his time in self-imposed exile in small, isolated villages. His main pre-occupation was writing.
Gülen continues this text-centred methodology. As Özdalga (2005, 436) notes, since Nursi, this tradition, which includes the present-day Gülen, has an intellectual format in which texts ‘serve to provide a field of shared values and identities, synthesised at a level of abstraction’. Although Gülen initiated his independent Movement in the 1970s, he made Nursi’s collected works its main intellectual diet, deeming them matchless as creators of group identity. In one sense, Risale-i Nur became the textual space in which Gülen articulates group identity. The key point in explaining the link between Nursi and Gülen is that the latter made an epistemic instrument of Nursi’s intellectual legacy and devised an effective strategy by means of it for forming a group identity. Risale-i Nur helped Gülen keep his followers away from the various effects of modernisation. Risale-i Nur became an effective bridge between contemporary Muslims and the Islamic tradition.
The Gülen Movement and amodernity
The Gülen Movement operates mainly through the symbolic, discursive and institutional corridors of the traditional Islamic heritage. These traditional constructs make the social environment permeable by the Movement. The Movement can operate on this amodern terrain even in non-Muslim societies and thus expand its network. Since amodern discursive space is less categorised and divided than the modern space, the Movement easily establishes personal, communal networks with people everywhere. The amodern space provides a protected terrain, where the divisive effects of modernity are reduced.
Gülen prefers to base his teaching strictly on the precedents of historical Islam (Eldridge 2007). His understanding of Islam is not modernised or reformed as modernity compliant categories of natural and social phenomena. He interprets Islam as it was interpreted by classical texts before modernity, in the style of a monism not congruent with the rationally separated, that is the Cartesian, world. More precisely, Gülen’s discourse does not credit the boundaries our modern world has set. In this sense, his discourse seeks to mobilise the universal spiritual elements within the [Islamic] traditions, codes and idioms of the past to advance new symbolic systems that can stand out as guideposts (Williams 2007). Gülen’s activism consists mainly of his commendations of the traditional practices and consciousness that have survived, in their various forms and adaptations, in Muslim daily life (Toğuşlu 2007). Historical Islam is the foundation of the motivation to form networks (2007, 722).
Modernity has radical implications for Muslim societies, for it declares traditional practices completely obsolete (Ashton and Balcı 2008). But their official relegation into the ‘ignorance’ category did not bring an end to those practices. Instead, and paradoxically, it transformed them into invisible and safe operational spaces. The resilience of societal Islam despite oppressive secularisation policies is owed to the operational spaces of religion. Yet, the secular élite, Turkey’s included, have failed to develop a political language that is meaningful in such spaces. Consequently, the persistence that keeps all political procedure within the modern space has produced a kind of political aphasia: communication between the masses and the élite has become the weakest link in the political game. Aware of this weakness, Gülen targets the complex transnational grassroots networks that Islam creates. Therefore, he intends to act as the re-introducer to contemporary audience of these traditional patterns and institutions. Having carved out its own autonomy, and therefore independence of the state élite, the traditional space, unrecognised and therefore not fully supervised, curtails the reach of the modern state.
Historically speaking, Islam has always been linked with such societal formations which should be seen the origin of above-mentioned traditional patterns. Social formations and movements have played a critical role, particularly in Islam’s expansion. Since the historic expansion of Islam happened before the advent of modernity, it is obvious that the expansion was the product mainly of social formations such as guilds, orders and merchants. For instance, the expansion of Islam in Anatolia in the eleventh century was the work of social actors. In fact, from the beginning, Islam established itself according to its own societal dynamics. Tog˘us¸lu has studied the futuwwah-malamati orders and akhi organisations, which were the main agents of Anatolia’s Islamisation in the eleventh century (2007, 713). Toğuşlu writes: ‘In 9th century, in the first phase of the expansion of Muslims throughout Anatolia, these futuwwa organisations, or warrior guilds, played a crucial role in the establishment of Muslim rule in the Near East’ (2007, 719). The critical question is the current potential of these traditional forms, the historic dynamism of Islam. There are complex and significant religious networks and structures that have existed for centuries and have witnessed the demise of many states and empires since twelfth century. These traditions have a long history of continuity. For instance, the Naqshbandi order, which traces back to the fourteenth century, has woven a brilliant structure of networks and patterns across a large region, one that stretches from the Balkans to Central Asia. Despite the serious blows of modernity, its complex network is still alive. The Naqshi zone, which extends from Anatolia to the Balkans, still carries complex trans-national symbols, patterns, codes and values. Studying the current expansion of Islam in Africa, Otayek (2009, 26) cited these traditional patterns of religion as Islamic modes of diplomatic action, which are ‘informal, infra-state and parallel dynamics, half-way between legitimacy and illegitimacy and internality and externality’, with a capacity of confusing state apparatus. Such traditions have left a sophisticated symbolic, discursive, cognitive and behavioural commons to Muslims.
Attaching itself to the traditional forms of Islam, the Gülen movement does not categorically reject modernity, but acts on an amodern philosophy that is indifferent to it. Gülen neither discards nor even appraises modernity en bloc. His is a selective stance built on certain patterns of Islam, patterns created before modernity and still extant. These amodern spaces are the major operational corridors. Gülen removes the modern system from its commonly accepted position as the framework of political thinking and introduces a larger Islamic cosmological order (West 2006). Yet, the reintroduction of a parallel space is indeed an attempt to negotiate with modernity. Unlike the typical Islamist response to modernity, this negotiation is not limited by moral criticism. Instead, it refutes the interpretation of human life from a monopolistic perspective on modernity and thus reminds of the eligibility of certain amodern Islamic paradigms.
As underlined above, ‘daily life’ is the explanatory keyword in the analysis of how the Gülen Movement establishes itself as a capable agent of traditional forms. Social relations are produced and reproduced in daily life. Yet, as Burkitt (2004) says, daily life incorporates an array of discrete social fields. Daily life, as the single plane of immanence, mixes the different social fields, even those separated according to modern boundaries (2004, 226). Thus, the division ‘formal and informal’, or ‘official and unofficial’, is to be treated with caution in daily life. More importantly, daily life’s propensity to fuse the various social fields creates a potential authority for agents who can coordinate their actions in tune with them. The Gülen Movement thus wants to be an agent of daily life. As most of the traditional patterns and values of Islam are effective in daily life, due to the sanctification of daily life, the popular institutions of modernity are never credited with supremacy. Instead, the major operational field is daily life. Thus, ‘the approach of the Movement, especially through its educational ‘agencies’, is from the grass roots upwards’ (Williams 2007, 790). The informal structures of Islamic culture, having established themselves as social/cultural actors, that is, not as a political movements, command a special emphasis (Çetin, 2007). This asserts the Gülen Movement’s instrumentalist position in its approach to the state and even to civilisation. Since the major unit of analysis in Gülen’s philosophy is daily life, other categories such as ‘city’, ‘state’ and even ‘civilisation’ have secondary significance.
Islam does not need the state to survive, but rather, it needs educated and financially rich communities. In a way, it is not the state, but rather, the community, that is needed in a system that is fully democratic. (Cited in Akyol 2008, 31)The fundamental principles and codes are thus always more decisive than the formal institutions.
Islam does not propose a certain unchangeable form of government or attempt to shape it. Instead, Islam has established fundamental principles that orient a government’s general character, leaving it to the people to choose the type and form of government according to time and circumstances. (Gülen 2001, 133)The prioritisation of institutions is not correct, as ‘city’, ‘civilisation’, ‘country and ‘state’ come after ‘human’ (Ergene 2005, 254). Gülen takes the rational artefacts of modernity as contingent phenomena lacking an ontological nature.
His dismissal of them requires the analysis of the other social practices that are vital in explaining the success of the Movement. Thus, the non-visible networks factor is the latent manifestation of the Gülen Movement as the perpetuator of historical cultural networks (Çetin 2007, 209). As an agent operating on this level, Gülen is not limited by the geographical constraints of the modern state. His networking capacity and his distance from the modern state make him an effective actor with a wide operational geography. As Yılmaz (2005, 398) notes, the independence of the state gives the movement an autonomy that improves its capacity to mobilise a large segment of society. This autonomy marks the major difference between the Movement and other Islamic movements as the others’ modern and national structures see them active only in their own states or in narrow regional areas.
As already noted, Gülen is himself the product of such informal networks. His background, compared with those of the typical Islamic leaders, is highly significant. As Kepel (2004) says, it is not normal to find an Islamic leader with a social science or humanities background. Yet very few of them are formally educated scholars of Islamic classics. In general, most Islamic leaders are lay people without a traditional Islamic education. (Erbakan was an engineer, Sayyid Qutb’s formal education was British and Mawdudi was a journalist.) Therefore, most of Islamic scholars have come up with typical modernist models. Despite the Islamic content of the messages they convey, most of the leading ulema they propagate in the Islamic world are products of modernity. Typically, the major institutions of modernity, such as the state, the nation and even the homeland, form the basis of their discourses. In this vein, Gülen reminds traditional Islamic scholars who wrote their major works before the advent of modernity. For instance, in a typical Gazalian text, the rational boundaries of modernity, such as borders or the homeland, are not observed. Traditional Islamic thought formulates itself in a borderless space. Gülen is very similar to that traditional narrative in terms of rejecting the rational boundaries of modernity. Staying indifferent to modernity, Gülen formulates his philosophy according to the traditional/amodern conventions of Islam. A study by Bruckmayr (2008) has shown how Gülen’s style engages the major tenets of the Islamic literary tradition. Analysed in terms of methodology, discourse and argumentation, Gülen is portrayed in this study as typical a sample of the traditional Islamic literary tradition. As Bruckmayr notes, ‘what lies at the root of Gülen’s references to past authorities is a desire to display continuity’ (2008, 190).
On a broader perspective, a discernible possibility is that a social movement that is autonomous and independent of modernity is peculiar to Turkey. Two reasons can be advanced to explain how the general settings of the Turkish case facilitate the rise of a social movement like the Gülen Movement. First, Turkey was never colonised, a fact that kept Islamic movements far from any intense struggle with the West. In the long term, this prevented the affiliation of Islamic movements with the idea of the state. Long years of struggles in many Muslim societies to attain independence against the Western coloniser forced Muslims to internalise the idea of the modern state, as well as the relevant ideologies such as nationalism. Second, Turkey has major traditional religious movements, or tariqat, that have kept their distinct social characteristics. Modernity found a highly organised societal Islam in Turkey, where strong civil religious traditions had a certain capacity of response. What Mardin (2005) dubs the Turkish-Islamic exceptionalism is a type of synthesis between Islam and modernity that was promoted by the Turkish intellectual e´lite (2005, 149). Modernity in Turkey has never become the only dominant form, at least not so far as to abolish traditional conventions.
The benefits of amodernity
Its amodern characteristics enhance the Gülen Movement’s institutional capacity in various ways. The sustaining of its security is an important sample. Acting mainly through informal networks, and thus not interested in the institutions or forms of modernity, the Movement has a large, secure field of action. It is not seen as an agent that threatens the institutional foundations of the modern system. Thanks to its indifference to the modernist institutions, it is not possible to accuse the Movement of creating an Islamic state, or of promoting a religious political system.
Its indifference to the institutional basis of modernity gives the Movement a strong immunity. Consequently, it has been operationally active in the different legal systems of the world, having never experienced a major problem, not even in critical times when authorities are highly alert to Islamic movements and to religious terrorism. The bureaucratic settings of modernity never identify Gülen’s informal network as a risky organisation. Acting within the structures of centuries’ old patterns makes the Movement invisible.
Again in the context of security, its amodern characteristics protect the Gülen Movement from any local nationalist reaction. Political Islamist movements, as a result of their overemphasising of the state, turned out in the end to be nationalist actions. Most contemporary Islamic movements are in fact modern and nationalist. Ayoob argues that national contexts manifest political Islam according to their distinctive local colour (2008). Their affiliation with the modern state is the historical origin of the nationalisation of Islam. Since many Islamic movements were created and evolved as resistance to foreign occupation, the idea of the state has become a significant aspect of Islamism. Likewise, Islamists dream of using the modern state for their aims of creating a more religious society. However, their affiliation with the modern state transformed them into various national Islamic movements. Thus, political Islam is a modern phenomenon (Ayoob 2008, 9). Ironically, despite their discursive disapproval of modernity, most mainstream Islamic movements are structurally modern. Notwithstanding their philosophical clash with modernity, those Islamic movements are eager to capture the institutions of modernity. However, the societal approach that operates mainly through the informal networks has prevented the Gülen Movement’s fall into the nationalist trap. In no state among the hundreds where Gülen is active has there been a nationalist reaction to the Movement. For instance, the Movement is very successful in Iraqi Kurdistan, paradoxically the country that has the thorniest problems with Turkey. Apart from its several schools, the Movement has Ishik University in Arbil. Despite their problems with Turkey, Kurds support the Movement’s schools.2 The success in the Kurdish region is due mainly to the Movement’s indifference to the modern configuration of the politics of Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.
In the same way, its distance from modernity keeps the Movement out of political divisions and tensions. Hence, it is very successful even in politically divided countries. Gülen’s agent is active in the classroom or market, that is, in daily life, a sphere without an interest in politics. Therefore, intra-societal political divisions are not a concern of the Gülen perspective. The Movement is successful in developing closed contacts with people with a variety of political perspectives. Even in countries such as Togo and Albania, where drastic regime changes are common, the movement is not negatively affected. As an organisation that believes the transformative capacity of modern institutions such as state to be very limited, the Gülen Movement is indifferent to them, to the point that it is totally silent about them. The public space created by the Movement does not recognise the political divisions of modern institutions. For example, in Nigeria, we observed that families with different religious and political backgrounds send their children to the Movement’s schools precisely because they are seen as neutral public spaces.3
Finally, if a network has a capacity to generate a level of legitimacy, the agents of that network benefit (Podolny and Page 1998). Similarly, the Gülen Movement has gained legitimacy among Muslims around the globe because of its use of the amodern networks of Islam. The centuries old religious tradition, along with its sophisticated symbols, become the catalyst of the Gülen Movement’s legitimacy. Gülen’s intellectual connection with the Islamic literary tradition is also his operational corridor to all the parts of the Islamic community. Interestingly, the Gülen Movement’s legitimacy benefits also from other traditions, such as that of Christianity. Unlike several modern scholars who follow a refutation-based approach to the other Abrahamic religions, Gülen incorporates them into the sphere of Islam as the historical and integral parts of the Muslim faith. Additionally, the Movement has a very close relationship with the representatives of other religions. Gülen himself has met senior clergy, including Pope John Paul II, Bartholomew I, the head of the Istanbul Orthodox Church, Cardinal Arinze of the Vatican, and Cardinal O’Connor, the Archbishop of New York. A Gülen Chair was created by the Australian Catholic University with a mission to work on Muslim–Catholic relations. Such bonds are also very important in sustaining the Movement’s legitimacy, especially in Christian societies. For example, during a field study in various Christian societies such as Lagos (Nigeria) and Clemson (the USA), we observed that the Movement has closed relations with the local Christian communities. It frequently uses the local churches for its social programmes. Intensive contacts with other religions also enable the Gülen Movement to benefit from these informal networks, increasing its own legitimacy among local publics.
Conclusion
Our observations on the Gülen Movement have shown that an irregular attitude to modernity exists as a third option. Unlike the anti- or pro-stances, the amodern alternative forms itself on the traditional codes of Islam. In practice, this is a rediscovery of the traditional Islamic codes and patterns that had their inception in the classical ages of Islam. Rediscovering it, the Gülen Movement carves out a sphere independent of modern institutions, and in that sphere, easily creates trans-national networks. The rediscovery of the Islam’s amodern sphere bypasses modernity’s disciplines. In that sphere, Islam is not conceptualised through the precepts of modernity nor as a stance against them. Instead, there is an intention to bring the classical Islamic heritage to the present daily life of the Muslim world.
The rediscovery of amodern Islam may equip new Islamic movements with serious capabilities. Amodern Islam has the capacity to create trans-national networks among Muslims because it transcends the rationally separated institutions of modernity. Anchored by the traditional matrix of Islam, it is possible to operate easily on the holistic terrain of historical Islam. Thus, the rise of the amodern sphere necessitates the analysis of how Islam reproduces itself through informal institutions. Informal corridors have been the major mechanism that keeps Islam alive. Most of the modernisation projects in the Middle East have been limited to the urban centres, the bureaucratic matrices of states. Islam’s behavioural and cognitive patterns survive as informal mechanisms outside the realms of urban officialdom. Its informal patterns are vital in an explanation of the expansion of the Gülen Movement to many countries.
The rise of the amodern world view will complicate the relationship between modernity and Islam, for the former is losing its central position, and with that, the significance of both its positive and negative reputations. Amodern reasoning aims to rediscover Islam’s independent sphere of meaning and action, a sphere in which the points of reference are the classical Islamic epistemic universe. Finally, the amodern approach is more revolutionary in terms of its transformative effects, for it operates through daily life.
* Department of Political Science, Zirve University, Gaziantep, Turkey
** Department of International Relations, Zirve University, Gaziantep, Turkey
Notes
1. Interview with Jenny Rajaoerison, 14 February 2010, Antananarivo, Madagascar.
2. Interview with Ahmet Dinc, 15 February 2009, Arbil.
3. Field Study in Lagos and Kaduna, Nigeria, June 2005.
This paper was published in & in Culture and Religion (Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2011, 21–37) & presented at the international conference “The Gülen Movement: Paradigms, Projects, and Aspirations” in University of Chicago on Nov. 11-15, 2010. For full list of references, the reader may refer to http://zirve.academia.edu/GokhanBacik/Papers/886493/New_Islamic_movements_and_amodern_networks
