“[The Gulen Movement] educates and socializes individuals without individualizing and politicizing the social.” (p. 152)

The Gulen Movement (hereafter GM), as it is usually referred to in English, has attracted the attention of “critical public minds and scholarship” throughout the world in recent years for two important reasons. First, Fethullah Gulen’s ideas and praxis demonstrate the potential role of religion in reshaping the present violent, conflict ridden world into an inclusive, humanistic society and world order based on the principles of pluralism, intercultural dialogue, and mutual living. Second and more important, Gulen, through his twin tools of Islamic hermeneutics and public actions, particularly in the field of education, has restored the “humane face of Islam” in the public eye—something that was lost due to centuries of a radical, positivist, secular and Orientalist narrative of Islam and more recently due to acts of violence in the name of Islam—and has demonstrated the complementarity of Islam and modernity. This reconciliation of faith and reason—both in terms of theory and action—solves a conundrum that has plagued the Islamic scholars for long.

Çetin’s Gulen Movement: Civic Service Without Borders is an important contribution to a chain of literature that has surfaced on the GM in recent years. The title itself is an indication that the author sees the movement in transnational perspective and attempts to uplift the movement from “its narrow Turkish national location,” which is otherwise a dominant trend in the scholarly writings on the GM. Though the author did locate the emergence of GM in the national-political context of modern Turkey, the “Islamic civil ethic” or “service ethic”—what is called hizmet in Gulen’s Islamic philosophy—has inherent potential to outgrow the originating national-political context.

No scholarly work on Islamic movements in modern Turkey is possible without a reference to the background of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and his work. Nursi was a remarkable scholar of twentieth-century Turkey who, through his Risale-i Nur collection of epistles on Qur’anic thought, preserved the religious spirit in the secularizing society. However the near absence of reference of Nursi’s work in this book is surprising. This may be partly due to author’s approach and methodology that treats GM as social phenomenon rather than a religious phenomenon. This approach helps the reader to understand Gulen and the Hizmet movement that has flourished around his ideas and inspirations as a transnational social service movement. Çetin thus circumvents misperceptions that are very likely to arise from exclusively religious labels and associations. The Islamic dimension of the GM comes through the inspirational and motivational dimension of Islamic history and Islam-inspired values that Gulen utilizes in constructing a non-violent, peaceful, multicultural world. All this is done without having an exclusively “Islamic project,” which is otherwise the hallmark of political or cultural-social Islamic movements throughout the world.

The strength of Çetin’s book lies in his comprehensive treatment of the GM. This is one of the first scholarly works that provide a detailed description of diverse features within the GM. Most of the previous works on this subject matter has dealt with one or another aspect of the GM. This integrated approach helps in enriching the understanding of the full breadth of the movement. Using the framework of multi-causality, or what author called “syncretic perspective,” Çetin first examined the dominant social movement theories (particularly, Resource Mobilization theory, Political Opportunity theory and Frame theory) and found them inadequate in explaining a faith-based movement such as the GM in non-Western societies. These theories, according to the author, suffer from the limitation of a political economy perspective that does not take into consideration the role of a “subjective idea” or at best treats it as a “dependent variable” in the emergence of a particular social phenomenon or movement. But this restrictive theoretical framework is incapable of comprehending the non-conflictual, voluntary, philanthropist, altruist, faith-based GM as political economy theories primarily operate on the “principle of selective cooperation and opposition” to state actions. The author strongly contends that the GM has registered a strong social presence (in people’s consciousness) through chains of study centers, publishing houses, periodicals, training and scholarship, institutions for preparatory courses for university entrance exams, healthcare facilities, dormitories for the students, aid to poor and vulnerable sections of society, press and media organs and other socio-educational public institutions. This social position was established before the GM became highly visible in the public sphere in Turkey and Çetin rejects the perspective that links the emergence of the GM with the recognition and tacit support of state institutions, particularly in the 1980s, a period marked by “Islamic-Turkish synthesis nationalism.” Rather, the author exposes the politics of the elite, or what he called the “protectionist group,” in the name of “secularism” and “nationalism” in order to perpetuate its hold over the resources of the country and to this end long throttled the emergence of the democratic potential of Turkish society. It was Gulen’s Islamic mediated ideas, viewpoints, ethical and moral messages and the GM’s plethora of associated educational and social activities, which were/are conducted with sensitivity to “due process of law” and legal diligence, that gradually brought a shift in normative-cultural meaning of life that focuses on the cooperative instincts of human beings, the value of living together, dialogue and respect for multiple identities, which in turn also affected people’s perceptions and norms of “politics” and “development” and in the process refashioned the public space and revitalized and consolidated the process of democratization.

Çetin tries to envision—though more elaboration is needed—Gulen’s humanitarian ideas as an alternative theory for constructing a human society based on principles of cooperative instincts, the ethics of self sacrifice, and the compassionate behavior of human beings—a theory over against the modernist assumption that treats human beings as primarily selfish, egoistic, conflictual, hedonistic, and violent, naturally needing to be controlled and disciplined through coercion and indoctrination in order to create the kind of order found in the mechanized, contractual human society. This partly also explains why Gulen’s philosophy, like that of Mahatma Gandhi, does not evoke the perception of the “other.” Unlike many contemporary Islamic movements, Gulen does not see the West as the “threatening other” but a source of many positive values that Muslims need to reflect upon.

Combining the framework of a “material-ideational matrix” with an outsider-insider perspective and drawing largely from an empirical investigation based on interviews and questionnaires, the author seeks to explain both the emergence of the GM primarily as a “cultural actor” and also its multifaceted dimensions: democratic, participatory, peaceful, non-violent, insistent on working within the legal framework of the political system, voluntary and autonomous participation, lacking any organizational power, non-political, non-ideological, absence of any central text, non-requirement of formal membership, no ritual, no insignia, etc. In summary, the movement aims at the moral and ethical transformation of the individual self in the light of Islamic values and norms in order to sensitize the individual self about the “goodness” of collective civil action without politicizing the same or stimulating an expectation of material gain. The quotation by Çetin as highlighted in the beginning of this review best captures the mood, orientation, and thrust of the GM.

A cursory reading of this book gives an impression that Nursi’s search for “unity of heart and mind” has found a place in the GM. However, since this book studies the GM from a social movement theory, it does not deal with the key concepts or doctrine of Fethullah Gulen or even his philosophy of education—the most important dimension of the GM upon which rests the creation of Gulen’s “golden generation” that will shape the future world. The notion of hizmet, or ethic of service, is an Islamic value as old as Islam itself, exemplified in the institution of waqf. What, therefore, explains the re-emergence of an ethic of service as a central category in Gulen’s Islamic thought and the wider dissemination and acceptance of this value as an “everyday Islamic working value?” In this regard, the book does not address the question of “how and why?”—the agency, processes and reasons for the emergence of the GM—but describes and narrates only the “what?” about the movement.

No single book is sufficient to cover all aspects of a social phenomenon as global as the GM; thus, having read this book, the reader is still left with some difficult, unanswered questions: Why will the moral and ethical values which are deeply embedded in Gulen’s notion of hizmet, philanthropy, altruism, and voluntarism resonate with large masses in today’s context? Is the GM a postmodern phenomenon? Is it an Islamic movement, a social movement, or something in between? Is it a class-based or multiclass phenomenon? What is the dominant social base of this movement? Has the GM adopted the postmodern conceptions of life process that reject nation-centered discourse and focus on people-centered discourse, which, in turn, might partly explain its success and appeal?

Despite such questions unaddressed, the book is a must-read for all students and scholars who have an interest in discourse about social change.

Anwar Alam
Professor and Director, Centre for West Asia Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

Islamic movements today lack a path-breaking analysis comparable to Weber’s “Protestant Ethic.” Most Islamic groups have been evaluated according to either individual aspirations or the treatment they receive from other actors, especially their respected states. Analyses of the dynamic interaction between individual and group identities and the social and economic developments are necessary to understand the ongoing transformation in the Muslim world. Thanks to globalization, Muslim societies have come to grips with the changing world, not only in terms of science and technology, but also the far-reaching ideas of economic rationality, political freedoms, and human rights. Some Muslim intellectuals have attempted to develop a new sense of religiosity in touch with modern realities and these ideas have been put into practice by various forms of social activism.

Fethullah Gulen is an influential Muslim intellectual who inspired a series of social activities, including a transnational education and business network, inter-faith dialogue forums, and multi-cultural encounters. Gulen and his loosely-knit informal community have been subjected to political accusations in Turkey regarding the scope and motives of their activities. Scholarly interest was stimulated after the mid-1990s with the increased visibility of the movement in the Turkish public arena and overseas education initiatives. A recent book came out in such a context to investigate social aspects of the Gulen movement with the intent of eradicating an intellectual gap by offering a coherent social interpretation of the movement. Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gulen Movement provides in-depth textual and contextual analyses of the emergence of the movement and also its evolution from a religious associate circle into a transnational “identity and ethic oriented faith movement.”

The book is an edited volume by M. Hakan Yavuz and John L. Esposito, two leading scholars on Islam in the US. Starting with an investigation of the public role of Islam in modern Turkey, Yavuz identifies the intellectual and social roots of the Gulen movement. According to him, Gulen has taken Said Nursi’s faith-based movement one step further to transmit religious consciousness of the individuals to the larger social institutions and has made Islam a significant contributor to public discussions. He defines Gulen as a “social innovator” who utilizes Islam as a social capital to promote civil society. Yavuz makes an analogy between the Gulen movement and the Puritans of the 16th and 17th century England in an effort to delineate the social activism inherent in the outlook of the movement. Yavuz believes that ideas and social factors shape each other and social movements are products of this interaction.

The Gulen movement is by no means an exception and has been quick to adapt to the changes in the world. Hence, the ideological left-right struggles of the 1970s, the economic and political liberalization of the 1980s and the global discourse of human rights has made a striking imprint on the identity of the movement. Hasan Kosebalaban’s discussion of the national security identity and enemy-friend culture of Fethullah Gulen illuminates some of these impressions. One of the key remarks of the book is that the movement has been quite successful in adapting to new social conditions, transforming itself and developing a language that speaks to the prevailing issues of the time.

The remaining chapters in the book can be divided into three categories: portrayal of Fethullah Gulen, connection among the Gulen movement’s followers, and the movement’s cultural and educational activities. First, the book presents a multi-dimensional portrait of Fethullah Gulen as a leader and intellectual. Gulen’s ideas regarding some of the social issues, such as democracy, state, and interaction with non-Muslims, are laid out from his various written and oral statements.

Ahmet Kuru analyzes Gulen’s critical engagement with Muslim tradition and modernity in order to come up with an intellectually appealing middle way between science and religious knowledge, reason and revelation, progress and tradition, and free will and destiny. Ihsan Yilmaz looks at the issue from a slightly different angle to highlight how Gulen and his community promote a new understanding of Islam in regards to state and governance, relations with non-Muslims, and civil society activism. He defines this renewal as Ijtihad (interpretation) by Conduct, with possible broader implication over the Muslim world. Related to the social issues is the practice of religion by Gulen and his associates. Zeki Saritoprak explores Gulen’s ideas of theology and practices of piety, comparing these with classical Sufi orders and concludes that Gulen, in his own way, is a Sufi:

He adheres to core ideas and aspirations of Sufism without necessarily following the traditional structured relationship between master and disciples. These articles underline an attempt by the movement to combine private piety with public activism, with its significant implications on modern Muslim identity, thought and practice.

One of the central questions that the book tackles is how a loosely-knit informal community of volunteers can undertake such a transnational venture. In other words, who are the individual champions of the movement’s accomplishments? And can they carve a niche for their personal identities within the confines of the movement? A second set of articles examines these matters. Elisabeth Ozdalga provides a report of an in-depth interview with three members of the community in Turkey. She investigates the influence of Gulen’s ideas and the movement’s public image over the formation of individual identities. Although she finds the movement conservative on social issues, she does not see this as an obstacle for independent self-reflection. Other chapters on the education project of the movement repeatedly underline the idealism of the participants and solidarity among the fellows. The Gulen movement is an interesting case in regards to its organization. For most scholars, it is puzzling to see a social movement managed by individuals with pious motivations carrying out social functions that are not strictly religious.

The third set of articles takes on the most prominent aspect of the movement: the educational activities. Thomas Michel looks at Gulen’s outlook on education and identifies his concerns about some of the modern challenges to true “human freedom.” Impoverishment of spirituality and ethical bases of value degeneration through false dichotomies and artifacts make up the departing point of the movement’s educational enterprise. In as diverse contexts as Turkey, Bosnia, Khazakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, and The Philippines, the teachers seek to cultivate good morals and conduct in their pupils as well as excelling in sciences. Education plays a bridging role not only between Turkey and the host countries, but also among subnational groups and localities. Michel’s chapter mentions an example from The Philippines, where a school named “Philippine-Turkish School of Tolerance” played a constructive role to ease the tension between Muslims and Christians. Other contributors to the issue of education in the volume stress to the movement’s adept synthesis of local, national, and global values.

There are also some other compelling chapters which do not fall exactly into any of the three categories above. Yasin Aktay’s analysis of the constitutive elements of Gulen’s discourse should be mentioned among them.

The concluding chapter of the book puts forward a new perspective to understanding transnational social movements and religion in the contemporary world. John Voll, another leading scholar on Islam, questions the utility of binary thinking by arguing on behalf of a new framework for reading the social transformations that take place every now and then. He proposes the abandonment of the dichotomies of modern-traditional, global-local, and secular-religious in order to closely capture what is going on in social life. According to Voll, we have moved to a global, desecularized, multicultural, and pluralist world. One can argue that the Gulen movement sets a proper example of a correct reading of this multi-faceted dynamic world with its “active pietism” in the global public sphere.