Abdullah Bozkurt
I was not planning to end up in Darfur last week when I booked the flight to Ankara from Strasbourg, where I covered the winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In fact, the next day, I was already scheduled to depart for Egypt to meet with the prime minister, foreign minister and other Egyptian officials until I got a last-minute call during a short layover in Munich for a connecting flight.
An official on the phone from the Egyptian Embassy in Ankara was advising me to delay my departure until the dust settled in his homeland. I heeded his advice and cancelled my booking to Cairo. The next day all the officials I was supposed to meet for a series of interviews were sacked by President Hosni Mubarak in an effort to calm growing protest movements. In a way it turned out to be good advice when I saw footage of my colleagues getting beat up and taken away by pro-government thugs in the Egyptian capital.
February 11, 2011
February 10, 2011
Book Review: Faith, Theology and Service in Peacebuilding
Stanley Ridge*
Fethullah Gülen's work and thinking starts and ends in faith. In a world that commonly extends conflict by speaking of religion either in stereotyped or in ideologized terms, this is a refreshingly engaged perspective.
Faced with the challenge of mounting hostility between the Islamic world and the West, and with belligerent and increasingly fundamentalist groups on both sides supposedly speaking in the name of religion, the need for peacebuilding with integrity is pressing. The writers of different traditions whose essays resonate here explore the faith-based ideas of one of this century's seminal thinkers and tease out their implications and potential for peacebuilding.
Fethullah Gülen's work and thinking starts and ends in faith. In a world that commonly extends conflict by speaking of religion either in stereotyped or in ideologized terms, this is a refreshingly engaged perspective.
Faced with the challenge of mounting hostility between the Islamic world and the West, and with belligerent and increasingly fundamentalist groups on both sides supposedly speaking in the name of religion, the need for peacebuilding with integrity is pressing. The writers of different traditions whose essays resonate here explore the faith-based ideas of one of this century's seminal thinkers and tease out their implications and potential for peacebuilding.
February 9, 2011
Islamic Democrats and the Turkish Model
Ahmad Ali Khalid
There is a realisation that the state must be secular in its institutions but liberal in its outlook, allowing for multiple voices in the public sphere. What we are seeing in the Muslim world is perhaps a return towards the early models of Islamic governance put forward by Islamic reformists and liberals.
The Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) and organisations like the Gulen movement represent the logical culmination of the democratic aspirations of the Muslim world. The combination of religious philosophy and liberal values whilst adopting secular state institutions and allowing religious voices a role in the public sphere is the most reasonable framework of democratic governance available to us. ‘Public Islam’ is desirable, but ‘state Islam’ is inevitably totalitarian.
The Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) and organisations like the Gulen movement represent the logical culmination of the democratic aspirations of the Muslim world. The combination of religious philosophy and liberal values whilst adopting secular state institutions and allowing religious voices a role in the public sphere is the most reasonable framework of democratic governance available to us. ‘Public Islam’ is desirable, but ‘state Islam’ is inevitably totalitarian.
February 8, 2011
Is the Gülen Movement a Religious Order? *
M. Enes Ergene
Even though the essential dynamics of the Gülen movement look similar to those of the classical Islamic tradition of spiritual orders in certain aspects, its organization is different with regard to producing civil initiatives and its way of acculturation. Max Weber's concept of "worldly asceticism" can help analyze the Gülen movement only to a certain degree. Instead, it is a movement that has been organized by civil dynamics. The Gülen movement is defined by modesty, self-sacrifice, altruism, devotion, togetherness, service without expectations, and by a depth of the spirit and heart with no anticipation for personal gain for any intention or deed. These are all concepts of Sufi culture, and these are also among the intellectual and active dynamics of the movement. But these concepts do not only relate to a person's own inner world, as in some Sufi orders; they are also directed to the outside, to what is social, to the same degree. In that respect, the awareness of religious depth and servanthood to God has more all-encompassing and social aims. Weber views such action as a "rationalization of religious and social relations." But even such a notion does not fully encompass the rational and social dynamics of the Gülen movement.
Even though the essential dynamics of the Gülen movement look similar to those of the classical Islamic tradition of spiritual orders in certain aspects, its organization is different with regard to producing civil initiatives and its way of acculturation. Max Weber's concept of "worldly asceticism" can help analyze the Gülen movement only to a certain degree. Instead, it is a movement that has been organized by civil dynamics. The Gülen movement is defined by modesty, self-sacrifice, altruism, devotion, togetherness, service without expectations, and by a depth of the spirit and heart with no anticipation for personal gain for any intention or deed. These are all concepts of Sufi culture, and these are also among the intellectual and active dynamics of the movement. But these concepts do not only relate to a person's own inner world, as in some Sufi orders; they are also directed to the outside, to what is social, to the same degree. In that respect, the awareness of religious depth and servanthood to God has more all-encompassing and social aims. Weber views such action as a "rationalization of religious and social relations." But even such a notion does not fully encompass the rational and social dynamics of the Gülen movement.
February 6, 2011
Defending Religious Diversity and Tolerance in America Today: Lessons from Fethullah Gülen
The Rev. Loye Ashton, Ph.D., Millsaps College
How does Fethullah Gülen integrate both commitment to his own faith and tolerance toward the faith of others? There are at least three approaches within his work that are especially rich for exploring this question.
How does Fethullah Gülen integrate both commitment to his own faith and tolerance toward the faith of others? There are at least three approaches within his work that are especially rich for exploring this question.
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