October 15, 2013

Dying for a Cause: Youth, Violence, and the Gulen Movement--Beyond Tolerance and Dialogue

Jon Pahl*

A Love for Jihad?

In the expanding, concentric circles of social practices through which young people might be invited to live for a cause, the broadest circle in the Gülen movement belongs to the spiritual or social practice of jihad. This Qur’anic term has been hijacked by militants and militaries (Bonner). Together, both militants and militaries have associated jihad with violence and force--with physical destruction. Yet Fethullah Gülen’s teaching about jihad makes clear a very different meaning. Jihad “means using all one’s strength, as well as moving toward an objective with all one’s power… and resisting every difficulty.”(2006d, p. 62) Far from being only a physical war, this “greater jihad” is an internal, spiritual process--striving in the path of God. Gülen defines it as “the effort to attain one’s essence.” The objective of jihad is never dominance, but peace. Jihad is about “overcoming obstacles between oneself and his or her essence, and the soul’s reaching knowledge and eventually divine knowledge, divine love, and spiritual bliss”.

To be sure, Gülen admits that there may be historical situations when no option other than physical force remains open for a nation to defend itself against unjust attack. History is riddled with conflict. “There are always going to be battles,” he claims. Gülen cites as examples of just conflicts the Turks’ defense of their territory as the Ottoman Empire declined, in battles such as at Canakkale and Tablusgarp—where Mustafa Kemal established his reputation. To clarify his realism, Gülen turns to satire: “You have come to make us civilized. That’s good of you. Welcome. Look, you’ve brought soldiers!”(Ibid.) In such a desperate situation, even Gandhi counseled violence rather than masochistic abandonment. But defensive war is the “lesser jihad.” Only Westerners who are “consumed with hatred,” and “immature Muslims” mistake physical warfare as the primary meaning of jihad. Thus, self-styled “jihadis” like Osama bin Laden and other terrorists receive direct criticism from Gülen. “The rules of Islam are clear. Individuals cannot declare war. A group or an organization cannot declare war. War is declared by the state.” Even more directly, Gulen claims “A Muslim cannot say, ‘I will kill a person and then go to Heaven.’ God’s approval cannot be won by killing people.”(Ibid) And on Bin Laden Gulen directly writes: “[He] has sullied the bright face of Islam. He has created a contaminated image… [and] replaced Islamic logic with his own feelings and desires. He is a monster.” Such criticism is founded, by Gülen, upon a verse from the Qur’an that he cites repeatedly: “If one person kills another unjustly, it is the same as if he or she has killed all of humanity; if one saves another, it is the same as if he or she has saved all of humanity.”(5:32) The greater jihad that Gülen recommends, then, is waged against violence, and is waged through love.Such a rigorously ethical life-path promises to engage not only youth, but to engage any human in a set of challenges that will more than encompass a lifetime’s labor. The primary obstacles to be overcome by jihad are not infidels or enemies, but internal dispositions and habits. “Malice and hatred are the seeds of hell scattered among people by evil,” Gülen contends (2006d, 51). And in contrast to these seeds of hell, heaven awaits--and in some sense is already present among, those who love.

“Whoever has the greatest… love is humanity’s greatest hero, one who has uprooted any personal feelings of hatred and rancor…These lofty souls, who daily light a new torch of love in their inner world and make their hearts a source of love and altruism, are welcomed and loved by people… Love, the most direct way to someone’s heart, is the Prophet’s way”. This love is theological, as well as psychological and social: “God created the whole of creation out of love and Islam has embroidered the delicate lacework of this love… Love is the raison d’etre for the existence of creation”. Success at what we might call this “love jihad”—which begins by recognizing with gratitude the gift of life, leads not to violence, but to altruism. “People consciously participate in [God’s] symphony of love in existence, and developing the love in their true nature, they investigate the ways to demonstrate it in a human way.

Therefore, without neglecting the love in their spirit and for the sake of the love in their own nature, every person should offer real help and support to others. They should protect the general harmony”. A love jihad, in short, leads to justice, peace, and all the other virtues. About their attainment in history, Gülen is relentlessly hopeful: “Goodness, beauty, truthfulness, and being virtuous are the essence of the world and humanity. Whatever happens, the world will one day find this essence. No one can prevent this.” At root, then, what the Gülen movement offers to young people is a reframing of the religious discourses--such as “sacrifice” and “jihad,” and of rites of passage--such as testing in struggle, that have been co-opted by nation-states and terrorists toward violent ends. The Gülen movement turns these discourses and practices away from destructive activities and toward the challenging matters of forging a civil society.

…Gülen’s reframing of jihad builds on the classical notion of the struggle against the self, grounded in the central Qur’anic theme of generosity (and mercy), by turning jihad into a struggle against violence, or what Bonney calls a “jihad for justice” or even “jihad against militant jihad.” What such a struggle opens up, then, is the prospect of what we might call, following the Buddhist scholar Thich Nhat Hanh, “engaged transcendence.” That is, one does not experience glory in detachment, much less in destruction, but in the midst of the processes of living generously, mindfully, creatively, and compassionately out of commitment to justice. This is, as I understand it, consistent with the Sufi way of Rumi and others (see, for instance, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, 2004). It also happens to accord with perhaps the most influential modern thinker in my own tradition of Lutheranism, Albert Schweitzer (Barsam). Schweitzer called the ethic he tried to live by “reverence for life,” and he exemplified this ethic in his scholarship, music-making, and medical missionary work (see also Charny). Such an ethic does not confuse life with God, but sees God as life-giver who invites our reverence through the abundant gifts of the material world that have been provided for our delight. Among these gifts, of course, are the limits of life- -notably the fact that each life (other than the one that is Eternal) is finite and bounded. Such a fact is denied by religious utopias that enact violence either through military adventures or through suicide bombings (see Keen). It is, in contrast, when young people learn to embrace the apparently fragile power of words, worship, and witness that this fragility can turn into collective power on the side of life (Arendt). As young people across traditions learn to experience and embrace this power, perhaps it is not inconceivable that they will forge a “brilliant generation,” turning the passion of religion into a passion against violence, and toward a “coming religious peace” (Pahl, 2009). Such a horizon--in which the vast collective resources of religions are turned away from destructive efforts to deny death and toward the life-giving power of love, is I believe the ultimate horizon that the Gülen movement shares with the global interfaith youth movement (Becker). As the famous Qur’anic passage, quoted often by Gülen, puts it: “there can be no coercion [violence] in religion” (2:256; Gülen 2006b, p. 27). This is not an easy lesson to learn. But it is vital, and the Gülen movement can help youth around the globe to learn it.

* Professor of the History of Christianity at The Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia 

Excerpted from the author’s paper presented at the international conference “Islam in the Age of Global Challenges: Alternative Perspectives of the Gulen Movement”, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., November 14-15, 2008.

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