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”.