May 17, 2014

Understanding of Muslims in US is limited, says scholar

Jihad Turk, the founding president of the first Islamic graduate school in the United States, Bayan College, a division of Claremont Lincoln University, admits that there is a negative image of Islam in the United States, thanks mainly to the media, but adds that it is not entrenched and changes once people get to know Muslims on a personal basis because Americans admit to knowing very little about Islam.

Starting a witch hunt

Orhan Oğuz Gürbüz

The discourse Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Chairman and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan relies on to intimidate his opponents has taken on a whole different dimension. The prime minister argues that his election victory in the March 30 local elections gives him the right to combat the Hizmet movement, which he refers to as the “parallel state” or “parallel structure.”

Evolution of the Gülen Movement

Helen Rose Ebaugh

Scholars who study social movements agree that the elements of a movement must “incubate” for a while before it emerges into the public as a recognizable social movement. Because of his preaching and recorded messages, the ideas and inspiration of Mr. Gülen were becoming well known in Turkey by the early 1980s. Increasing numbers of people were joining the Gülen-inspired sohbets, the local circles of people who met regularly to discuss his ideas, to initiate the dormitories and preparatory classes he suggested, to finance these and other service projects and to establish a network of informal community relationships among like-minded citizens. These networks of individuals, including businessmen with the financial resources to support the service projects, had begun to form slowly in villages and cities where Mr. Gülen preached.