June 1, 2013

[BOOK REVIEW] Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement

Tamer Balci

Book Cover, Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement
Ten years after co-editing his first book on the Gülen movement, Hakan Yavuz, a leading scholar on Turkish society, brings his academic prowess and careful observations to bear on this dynamic phenomenon in Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement.1 This well-timed book not only provides an update on the growth of the movement over the last decade; it also offers the deepest view yet of its roots. To observers, it is "liberal yet communitarian; cosmopolitan yet puritan; both a source of hope and a source of fear"(11).