With ancient heritage, sprawling land, and fascinating
people, Turkey is literally at the crossroads of East and West. Sitting astride
the Bosporus, Turkey bridges Asia and Europe. Modern Turkey is not only situated
in two continents but also historically has been the centre for the physical and
intellectual struggle of two civilizations: Islam and the West. It has been an
uneasy actor balancing between Western secularism and traditionalist Islam since
Kemalist revolution.
Over three-quarters of a century ago Mustafa Kemal, launched
a sweeping Cultural Revolution in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, abolishing
the Caliphate and other Islamic institutions to create the modern secular
Republic of Turkey. Ever since, this has often provoked anti-Kemalist Islamic
resurgence and counter movements against the Kemalist trajectory of
nation-making, leading eventually to the institutionalization of a
Turkish-Islamic synthesis in the state structure. An ongoing shift to an Islamic
conception of nationhood has had its origins in the Ottoman Empire. The
objective was to re-establish Islamic sources of nationhood in modern Turkey.
Over the decades, through the consistent attempts and by analyzing the
world-view of Islam from a civilizational perspective, the Turkish Muslim
scholars/intellectuals have laid the foundations for a true revival of moderate
Islamic enlightenment thought in Turkey. The notion is indeed civilizational:
the scholars see Islam not just as a religion and culture but as a civlization
(political structure, social organization, a way of knowing – science, a way of
doing – technology, a way of being – art and culture) intact and waiting to be
rediscovered. Moreover, they regard Turkey as the arena where the battle between
the civilizations of Islam and the West originally started and will be
eventually settled through a dialogue.
Over the decades since the Kemalist revolution, there have
developed two competing concepts of modernity/secularism in Turkey. One is
top-down concept known as Kemalism, the ideology of Mustafa Kemal, the founder
of the modern Turkish Republic. This ideology has had nationalism and extreme
secularism as its pillars. Kemalist secularism has been equated with
modernization and Westernization that was very much laicism in the French
secular sense. This meant that there was no room for Islam in the public sphere;
and the public domain needed cleansing from Islam. Science was to become the
sole guide, while Islam was something negative and to be gotten rid of. Kemalism thus became
the legitimizing ideology of the governing elite. But as it increasingly came to
define the identity of the ruling elite, it generated major reactions from the
Turkish masses and the periphery. This reaction articulated itself against
secularism.
The second conception in Turkey has been a bottom-up
modernity/secularism that is neither alien nor negative. Most Turks have
welcomed it, but it has been negotiated and redefined. It has been also
internalized by the masses rather than imposed by the state from within or by
the West from without.
This bottom-up modernity/secularism – allowed space for Islam
in the public sphere. This conception of secularism was in line with the Islamic
notions. Here Islam has been seen as a source of morality and ethics. It did not
see Islam and politics as being necessarily in conflict or mutually exclusive.
However, it did not want Islam to become a tool of corrupt politics.
The Nursi Islamic movement, over the decades, has emphasized
Islam to remain above politics. Nursi was concerned that politics would corrupt
Islam. Badi‘ al-Zaman Sa‘id Nursi (1873-1960) was a prime-mover, and one of the
most influential intellectuals in Islamic thought early in Republics history. He
attempted to empower Turkey’s Muslims by updating Islamic terminology and
language. He tried to provide them with a new vocabulary in order to allow them
to participate in modern discussions and debates on issues like
constitutionalism, science, freedom and democracy. So one of his primary goals
was to empower Muslims with a new cognitive path. Secondly, he tried to provide
a new, flexible Muslim identity. Thirdly, he stressed the idea that sacred and
science were not in tension or mutually exclusive, but were to be integrated. In
a way, he tried to vernacularize science and modern discourses in an Islamic
idiom to facilitate the dissemination of scientific knowledge in Muslim
countries. These were the goals of Sa‘id Nursi’s works.
In the recent decades, Fetullah Gülen (b. 1938) has emerged
as one of the manifestations of Sa‘id Nursi’s legacy in Turkey. Gülen very much
represents this approach, and he remains an agent of this newer societal
transformation. He has played a key role in transforming people’s minds, and has
led them to a newer understanding of bottom-up modernity. The Gülen movement
emerged very much out of the Nursi’ movement, and yet there are certain new
characteristics that Gülen has brought to the movement. I call this new movement
a Nursi- Gülen movement. In terms of
nationalism, Gülen is a bit more Turkish nationalist (in a Pan-Turkish context)
in his thinking. Also, he is somewhat more state-oriented, and is concerned with
market economics and neo-liberal economic policies. These are then the major
characteristics of the Gülen movement.
The Gülen movement has been moving from ideas to practice.
Practice was important and thus action has been very significant. In its view,
Islam was not only about praying five times a day and reading Islamic books, but
included acting, doing and creating institutions. In that sense, the Gülen
movement is worldlier as it wanted to create heaven here and now – education
system, hospitals, institutions, and so forth. So whereas Sa‘id Nursi stressed
cognitive understanding, Gülen was action-oriented. Gülen has developed a
tremendous network of such institutions not only in Turkey but also in numerous
other Muslim and non-Muslim countries.
In Turkey, the pendulum has been swinging toward a bottom-up
conception of modernity, and a new vision of secularism over the decades has
evolved.
This writing is an attempt to look at Turkey’s islamization
example of over half a century. The most important link in this context has been
the Nursi-Gülen Islamic intellectual thought and movement.
Turkey has become increasingly interesting to scholars of
Islamic studies. It was the only Muslim nation in NATO, and has now started full
membership negotiations with the European Union, where it can certainly bridge
Islamic and Western civilizations. There is no doubt that Islam constitutes one
of the most essential elements of Turkish culture. Ninety-nine percent of the
Turkish population is Muslim. The influence of Nursi-Gülen discourse on the
Turkish public sphere has been paramount.
However, the main subject of this writing is Fethullah Gülen.
He is an influential Islamic personality in today’s Turkey and perhaps in the
world. His influence not only comes from his charismatic personality and his
intellectual wisdom but also from the large numbers of educational and social
institutions that have been established by his numerous admirers who take his
advice and recommendations very seriously. Recently, the Muslim World journal,
dedicated a special issue to Fethullah Gülen and his civic movement that would
contribute greatly to the understanding of modernities in Turkish-Islamic
context.
Although Gülen is an Islamic intellectual/scholar, his
accomplishments and interests have gone way beyond the field of theology. He is
well versed in Islamic sciences and at the same time is also knowledgeable of
Western thought. Gülen has read Hafiz as well as Goethe. He has knowledge of
Peyami Safa, a well-known Turkish novelist, and Dostoyevsky. Having studied
Islamic sciences in his youth, he has a great talent for memorization as well as
synthesis. Even today, at the age of sixty-six, he is able to recite the whole
Qur’an by heart. He is also versed in the field of hadith, the sayings of the
Prophet (sws). It would not be an exaggeration to say that Gülen has also more
than ten thousand ahadith memorized in the original Arabic language.
Fethullah Gülen managed to establish a vast civil society
movement through his inspirational speeches and writings. Since late 1960’s, his
movement has gradually evolved and grown in various areas of social life.
Avoiding partisan politics, the movement developed an enlightenment project to
fight the social ills. It includes the establishment of hundreds of modern
schools and several universities inside and outside of Turkey, a media network
(such as a TV national channel, a weekly news magazine, Samna, a leading daily
newspaper), and business organizations. Influenced by Sufi traditions, the Gülen
movement’s precepts of Turkish culture of tolerance have been criticized by both
extreme secularists and Islamic groups. Journalists and Writers Foundation is
Turkey’s first and foremost NGO; its honorary chairman is Fethullah Gülen. This
NGO effectively deals with interfaith dialogue and searches for common ground.
A reputable
academic journal published in the US, “The Muslim World” in its July 05 issue,
examined the views of Fethullah Gülen and his civil society movement formed
around him.
This special
edition ran the headline “Islam in Modern Turkey: Contributions of Fethullah
Gülen” and included articles on Gülen written by academics such as Sidney
Griffith, Zeki Saritoprak, Mucahit Bilici , Lester R. Kurtz, Elisabeth Özdalga,
and Thomas Michel.
Here the
readers will find brief summaries of the articles from this reputable journal in
the US. There was also an in-depth interview conducted with Gülen by the journal
that I will not be able to include in this writing. The articles for this
special issue elaborate various aspects of Gülen’s personality and endeavors
from different perspectives.
In the very first paper featured in this special issue, Osman
Bakar focuses on Gülen’s approach to
the relationship between science and Islam, examining Gülen’s understanding of
the nature of religious and scientific truths in a comparative way. He argues
that in contemporary Muslim discourse, it is uncommon to find serious scholars
among theologians who reflect on issues of Islam and science. He contends that
Gülen belongs to this very small group of committed theologians. Osman Bakar
describes Gülen as an Islamic scholar, whose roots lay in the traditional
Islamic sciences, and who at the same time is quite familiar with modern Western
science. Bakar notes that Gülen’s ideas on this matter have been shaped by its
deep faithfulness to Sufi intellectualism, even though he is not an initiator of
any Sufi order. Pointing at Gülen’s efforts to reconcile Islam and science,
Bakar indicates that Gülen’s teachings seek a sincere dialogue not just between
Islam and other faiths, but among religious men and scientists from different
societies as well. In this regard Gülen’s views are important for the
contemporary world in multiple aspects, notes Bakar.
Lester Kurtz’s
article examines Gülen’s paradox of combining personal commitment to Islamic
religious principles with a strong engagement with pluralism. He argues that
Gülen has managed to fuse theory and practice. Referring to certain theological
foundations on which Gülen has grounded his ideas of tolerance, Kurtz cites
Gülen: “One cannot be a Muslim unless one believes in the pre-Islamic prophets.”
Lester Kurtz, who starts with the supposition that loyalty to faith and
tolerance are distant and contradictory notions, concludes that Gülen has
reconciled these. Noting that Gülen encouraged others to practice tolerance, not
in spite of, but as a consequence of his loyalty to Islam, Kurtz points at the
schools as one of the most important areas in which this reconciliation has
taken effect. Indicating that these schools constituted a form of humanitarian
service, designed for education in the general sense of the term, and in order
to avoid Islamic propaganda, and he says that if humanity is to live for another
century, the voices coming from such faith communities as Gülen’s would
undoubtedly play a very important part in it.
Thomas Michel’s
article explores the relationship between Sufism and Modernity in the teachings
of Gülen. He also explores how Gülen successfully followed the teachings of
Sufism without being caught by the legal regulations of the Turkish state which
had banned the Sufi institution of tariqah. Michel speaks of three main
influences that shaped the thought of Gülen: Orthodox Sunni Islam, the
Naqshbandi Sufi tradition, and the Nursi movement. A great portion of this
article examines Gülen’s approach to modernity and his influence on contemporary
Turkish thought. Thomas Michel, who studies how “sufism” and “modernity” are
reconciled in Fethullah Gülen’s thoughts, points at an educational philosophy
that is reflected in the hundreds of schools established in Turkey, and
throughout the world as the most reliable evidence for this.
Michel says
that given the lack of integration between scientific knowledge and spiritual
values, Gülen and his companions introduced a new style of education which
reconciles the two. According to Michel, Gülen neither proposes rigid
traditionalism that completely rejects modern values, nor a nostalgic return to
the madrasah type education of Ottoman times. Rather he finds an Islamic middle
ground that stands in a critical engagement with modernity. In opposition to
modernist social planners he regards the real goal of the nations as the renewal
or “civilization” of the individuals and the society through moral action and
mentality. Michel characterizes the schools established with this philosophy in
mind as one of the most impressive and promising educational enterprises that is
currently taking place.
Elizabeth
Özdalga
wrote an article on the Gülen movement to attract attention to the “other faces
of Islam”. She examines the Gülen phenomena, which she terms as “the most
influential revival movement in modern Turkey” from the theoretical framework
discussed in Sociologist Norbert Elias’ book titled “Modernization Process”.
Özdalga analyzes the Gülen community from a sociological
perspective. She suggests that when public institutions fail to integrate
citizens, the demand on other organizations and communities to fill this void
increases. The Gülen community plays a significant role at this juncture. She
mentions the experiences of several female members of the Gülen movement and
emphatically suggests that the Gülen community is not a tariqah (Sufi order),
but rather a civic community. Referring to Elias’s analytic framework, Özdalga
examines the relationship between the Turkish establishment and the Gülen
movement.
Özdalga sees
the Gülen movement as being one of the civil interim networks undertaking the
role of “mediatorship” and filling the gaps where public institutions have
difficulty in integrating citizens with the system during the process of being a
modern nation-state.
Terming the
Gülen congregation as a “social network” being different from other traditional
congregations, Özdalga says, “The Gülen movement, which attaches so much
importance to education, makes a remarkable contribution to the formation of
values and identities, which lead to a deepening of the roots of the
construction of the nation-state process.”
According to
Özdalga, it is not religion but the fear of “settled ones” regarding the change
in the balance of power in favor of “those coming from outside,” just as Elias
mentioned the basis of the reaction towards Gülen.
Sidney Griffith and Zeki Saritoprak
explore Gülen’s idea of interfaith dialogue. This article attempts to find the
roots of Gülen’s approach by referring to early Islamic figures such as al-Hasan
al-Basri (d. 728) and Harith al-Muhasibi (d. 857), al-Ghazali (d. 1111), and
Jalal al-Din al-Rumi (d. 1276). Gülen also avidly read the more recent works of
two Indian writers, Ahmad Faruqi Sirhindi (1564-1624) and Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi
(1703-1762) as well as some Western classics such as Victor Hugo, William
Shakespeare, and Honore de Balzac. The article argues that “Bismillah,” the
first verse of the first Qur’anic chapter, constitutes the starting point for
Gülen’s understanding of inter-religious dialogue. Furthermore, the article
elaborates on Gülen’s meeting with Pope John Paul II and the reactions of
various Muslims to this meeting as well.
The article
examines the theological roots of the peace and anti-violence rooted in Islam;
and gives examples of the representatives of this tradition in Turkey such as
Suleyman Hilmi Tunahan, Mehmed Zahid Kotku, Badi‘ al-Zaman Sa‘id Nursi and
Fethullah Gülen.
These people
made an important contribution to the formation of a safer and peaceful
atmosphere in the country thanks to their loyalty to the principle of “being
against violence despite the pressures imposed by extreme secularists,”
according to Saritoprak.
Indicating
Gülen’s personal experiences that he gained during the “anarchy and military
coups” processes that play an important role in his anti-violence attitude,
Saritoprak says, “For a peaceful world in the future, Gülen encourages his
fellow citizens to establish schools in Turkey and abroad.”
Gülen strongly
defends “freedom of faith” for non-Muslims as well, says Saritoprak, concluding
that Turkey’s experience of an anti-violence attitude in the frame of Islamic
teachings is a valid solution in a period when Islam is identified with violence
and barbarism.
Mucahit Bilici approaches the Gülen movement and its politics
of representation more critically. His article examines the activities of a
Turkish institution called The Journalists and Writers Foundation, of which
Gülen is known as its honorary president, as well as other fields of interest in
the Gülen movement. Bilici finds that this organization is working to prevent
the fulfilment of Huntington’s prophecy of a “clash of civilizations.” Also, he
maintains that Gülen owes a great deal of his intellectual background to the
teachings of Sa‘id Nursi, although he differentiates between these two. Bilici
presents Gülen as a modern Ottoman, and expounds on several terms that are
popular within the Gülen movement, such as khidmat (service), and himmat
(support).
Finally, Ihsan Yilmaz’s
paper examines the transformation of Islam in modern Turkish history, especially
after the establishment of the modern Turkish state. Within this context, he
differentiates between civil Islam, represented by Gülen, and state Islam, for
which Yilmaz coins the term “Lausannian Islam.” Yilmaz also focuses on the
influence of Gülen’s discourse on the Turkish public sphere, and compares the
movement to other Islamic political parties established in Turkey. Yilmaz while
examining the secularism process in Turkey explains in his article how
non-official Islam is being lived although the Turkish state claiming a “secular
mujahidin” role wanted to establish the understanding of Lausanne Islam. He
exemplifies the National View’s movement of political Islam and Fethullah
Gülen’s movement of Anatolian Islam. Advocating that the Gülen movement, which
he also defines as the largest civilian movement in Turkey, made transformative
influences on society, nationalist Islam and political Islam as well; Yilmaz
considers Gülen’s discourse in the “moderate Islam” category. Yilmaz depends on
Gülen’s use of a flexible language on some issues relating to the authoritarian
state not showing tolerance to any rival in the social arena. He exemplifies the
efforts of secularist and nationalist circles that could not digest Gülen’s
meeting with Pope John Paul II under the context of dialogue among religions, to
make the Department of Religious Affairs take on that role.
This special
issue of “The Muslim World ‘‘publication, I believe provides an interesting
understanding of Fethullah Gülen and his contributions which have increasingly
received the attention of academic scholarship of the Muslim and the Western
World. With a charismatic personality, his ever multiplying admirers, and his
tremendous openness, Gülen and his civil society movement can contribute to the
development of positive relationships between Islam and the West. A close
examination of Gülen’s thought shows that he is one of the foremost Muslim
scholars of the present day Islamic World, who has been promoting dialogue and
tolerance between the Muslim communities, who differ among themselves in many
important ways, as well as between Muslims and the adherents of the other
religious traditions.
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