Fethullah Gulen Combats Islamophobia, Extremism

Nagehan Alci

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Media and Islamophobia

Some Western media have no doubt played a significant role in spreading Islamophobia. There is a popular saying about how events attract the media’s attention and make headlines: “If it bleeds, it leads.” For many people, good news is boring. In the United States, a news story about dialogue between Christians, Muslims and Jews likely would not air in prime time, but rather at 6 a.m., if then. Television channels are expected to air such human interest stories, but no one has told the channels when to air them. Fox News' coverage of topics concerning Muslims and Islam is an example. However, this does not mean that the mainstream media are always and necessarily anti-Islam. Incidents of child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, are covered widely by the mainstream media in the United States. The essential motivation for such coverage is to boost sales and ratings.

Islam and extremism

The main factor fueling Islamophobia in the West is extremist elements in the Muslim world. But non-extremist Muslims as well as religious leaders representing and interpreting Islam also have a share in the problem. Muslim religious leaders, for instance, fail to stand up against extremism as strongly as necessary.

Fethullah Gulen

A major exception in this regard is a person from Turkey: Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic leader who has stood up on those issues, sometimes at great risk. During the 2000 intifada, Gulen said he grieved also for the Israeli dead, drawing the ire of extremist groups in Turkey. We could well describe Gulen as the religious leader who has taken the most unequivocal stance in the Muslim world on any type of Islam-associated violence. He is also the religious leader who has worked the hardest for the healthy integration of the Western and Muslim words. Gulen has maintained that Muslims should not hate the West and that many Western values such as democracy and human rights and the principles of the market economy are compatible with Islam and that Muslims, too, should embrace these values and economic principles.

The significance of Gulen's approach would be better understood if we recall one recent incident. Several months ago, a Kuwaiti parliament member wrote a letter to the Saudi mufti asking whether the construction of a new church in Kuwait would be compatible with Islam. The Saudi mufti replied that Islam required not only the banning of the construction of a new church, but also the closure of existing ones. Both Gulen and Mehmet Gormez, the head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, openly criticized the Saudi mufti’s stance. And this is how religious leaders should be. This is a valuable attitude.
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Excerpted from author's analysis published on Al-Monitor, 7 October 2013, Monday

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