February 27, 2012

Globalization and the Hizmet movement

Ziya Meral *

Ongoing discussions in the popular media and scaremongering conspiracy theories about the Hizmet -- also known as the Gülen movement -- reflect two major intellectual failures.

The first of these is the common hermeneutic fallacy of not being aware and critical of the assumptions one starts with when interpreting reality. Thanks to 80 years of state-fuelled paranoia about anything to do with religion and civil society, the reality of an Islam-inspired civil society movement is automatically perceived as being a threat to our nation. Even the most banal and normal facts are seen as further proof for conspiracy theories.