The Journey and Work of Gulen Movment

Abstract

21ST century is clearly one of the most turbulent times of the human history; wars, famine, diseases, riots, ethnic violence and all such kinds of disasters, both human and natural have been witnessed. But one thing that surpassed all disasters is the clash between of civilizations and religions. The result of such multiple clashes has caused immense loss, both to human lives and human spirit. Both have been severely wounded. In order to heal the pain, many attempts have been made in the past, while many are still are ongoing. Gulen movement is one such attempt which uses education as a tool to bring social change in the form a bride between the clashing parties. This is done by building schools, propagating dialogue and tolerance and indeed tolerant- dialogue. This paper explores the movement; its brief history, its methods, its dynamics and the values it stands for.

Introduction

This paper looks at Gulen movement as a way to create a culture of reconciliation on a world scale using Education as a tool. The movement started in Turkey by Fethullah Gulen and gradually spread across 90 countries of the world. Tolerance and dialogue are among the most basic and broad dynamics of this movement. It intends to build brides of peace between religion and civilization through interfaith dialogue. The movement believes that international relations of past empires were founded on conflict and war. Different civilizations emphasized more on their differences rather than their commonalities and remained distanced, separated by thick walls of individual identities of politics, ideology and religion. This led to the conflict and the lack of dialogue.

However with new technology and phenomenon like that of globalization, which has made world a global village, there is a possibility of creating a missing link through dialogue and social pluralism. Gulen movement intends to provide this missing link by building schools across the world especially in the areas of conflict, where there is an increased need of understanding between different cultures and faiths, given their ethno-religiously fractured societies. This movement works with civil societies, which are formed by the informed citizens from voluntary, government and non government organizations. The role that the movement plays is that of bringing the actors of civil societies together, unite and organize them for common goals, thus removing the differences of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and creating the solidarity of ‘we’. The movement believes that absence of education, dialogue and tolerance is the reason of all conflicts and under-development. Through its unifying dynamics, the movement envisions societies with idealistic and patriotic members, who share common values with their counterparts with different ethno-religious backgrounds. These values are mainly dialogue, tolerance and individual perfection, all of which can be achieved through education. This vision of the movement and it enables it to communicate with a wide range of communities and cultures across the world to unite on the principles of peace and cooperation.
History, Sociology and Politics of the Movement

As an educational movement, Gulen movement started in early 80’s under the leadership of an sufi educator Fethullah Gulen who is a Turkish and lives in the United States. His attempts to bring science and religion together began in early 70’s, where the emphasis was on the scientific discourses of religion and how one religion can co exist, peacefully with many others. Since then, the movement evolved from building a religious community to building a global educational system that leads to integration into the modern world. While trying to achieve its goals, the movement avoids any kind of confrontation with the State. In fact by consciously understanding the State-centric political culture, the movement builds strong ties with the state to build and expand its social base. But at the same time it also maintains a distance from a particular party especially the ones with political nature or affiliations, or those in power. In this context Gulen, as a leader argues,

“We do not support any ruling party just because it is in power. There are ways in which they come in power and leave it. We need to control the ways and doors that play a key to walk to power. We should respect the government and express our opposition as is done in the most developed, western countries”. (Gulen, F. 2004)
From this statement it is clear that the movement is impressed if not inspired by the western political system. It is however also clear the movement does not have political inspirations .In fact, movement's strict avoidance from politics and from being politicized makes it able to communicate communities that are radically distant from each other on the political spectrum”.

The movement communicates with these different communities through a wide array of outlets that it owns and which it uses for educational purposes. This includes its own newspaper, television channel and a radio station .In addition, it distributes video and audio tapes. To promote the movements’ views and its beliefs, the followers have also set-up a wide range of organizations in Turkey, where the movement made it origins. It includes the Turkish Teachers' Foundation, which publishes academic journals and organizes national and international symposiums, panel discussions, and conferences. Another foundation, the Journalists' and Writers' Foundation, works towards bringing together the intellectuals possessing different worldviews and inviting them to speak on issues such as dialogue among civilizations.

The Gulen community owns and runs about 100 schools in Turkey. Followers of Gulen movement have also founded more than 200 schools around the world from Tanzania to China, but mostly in the Turkic republics. The movement also founded more than 500 places of learning in 90 countries including Uzbekistan, South Africa, Iraq, Palestine, Philippines, Pakistan, Albania, Afghanistan and Bosnia.