What is the Gülen Movement?
The Gülen Movement originated in 1970s' Turkey as a faith-inspired initiative to improve educational opportunities for a local community; since then, it has grown into a transnational educational, inter-cultural and interfaith movement.
It is estimated that participants number in several millions. The Gülen Movement has securely established, respected institutions (of different kinds, but mostly schools) on every continent.
What is the place of moral and spiritual values in the Gülen Movement?
Since the Gülen Movement originated as a faith-inspired civil society movement, motivations for participation include spiritual resources and moral values drawn from the Islamic tradition, like altruism and other non-material incentives.
What is the Movement's chief priority?
They can escape such tyranny only through education. The road to social justice is paved with adequate, universal education, for only this will give people sufficient understanding and tolerance to respect the rights of others.’
Gülen holds that a new style of education is necessary. This education will fuse religious and scientific knowledge with morality and spirituality. It will produce genuinely enlightened people with hearts illumined by religious sciences and spirituality, and minds illuminated with positive sciences. The actions and life-styles of such people will embody humanity and moral values, and they will understand the socio-economic and political conditions of their time.
The education supported by the Movement is oriented to enabling people to think for themselves, to be agents of change on behalf of the positive values of social justice, human rights and tolerance. This sharply distinguishes the Movement from exclusivist organizations or cults which are oriented inward and demand conformity from group members (of which the private rites, insignia, etc., are a badge).
