Emerald Hills of the Heart: Key Concepts in the Practice of Sufism
(This comprehensive study explores Sufism as a form of sel...)
This comprehensive study explores Sufism as a form of self-purification, offering a deeper understanding of the sacred acts and a greater knowledge and love of the divine. The first volume of the series presents such Sufi concepts as repentance, reflection, self-criticism, asceticism, piety, abstinence, self-supervision, and sincerity.
(A compilation of Fethullah Gulen's sermons on the life of...)
A compilation of Fethullah Gulen's sermons on the life of the prophet, the book offers us a deeper understanding of God's Messenger through looking into his exemplary life from different aspects.
Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance
(This book touches on certain dynamics regarding the theor...)
This book touches on certain dynamics regarding the theoretical and cultural basis of the model Fethullah Gulen has developed based on dialogue, tolerance, concurrence among different groups that come from different religions, cultures, and civilizations. Gulen's model focuses on human beings, those who surround all their world with thought and action, and who are directed toward love for God and for creation.
(Emphasizing the esthetic concerns of the Islamic civiliza...)
Emphasizing the esthetic concerns of the Islamic civilization as well as underlining the true nature of the religion, this insightful opus contains a collection of essays on the art of language from a revered contemporary scholar of Islam. Written separately as lead articles for the Turkish literary magazine, Yagmur, the volume eloquently articulates the author's approach to speech as well as his definitions of poetry, history, and beauty, all of which are deeply embroidered around the lacework of Islam. With a powerful emphasis on belief in God, each essay addresses an important matter of language that aptly relates to the current state of affairs in the Muslim world and the nature of human existence in the 21st century as a whole.
(Essentials of the Islamic Faith is a selection from some ...)
Essentials of the Islamic Faith is a selection from some of the speeches M. Fethullah Gülen has given to large audiences over a life-time of dedicated service. In these speeches, he explains the principal elements of Islamic belief - belief in the existence and Unity of God; in Resurrection and the Day of Judgment; in Divine Scriptures and other familiar themes of Islamic discourse. What is special and unique about the presentation of them in this book is that the author is constantly aware of the encroachment (and the seductive appeal) of cultural attitudes which are hostile not to Islam only but to any religious and contemplative way of life.
Ghazali on the Principles of Islamic Sprituality: Selections from The Forty Foundations of Religion
(Now you can experience the wisdom of Ghazali even if you ...)
Now you can experience the wisdom of Ghazali even if you have no previous knowledge of The Forty Foundations of Religion or Islam. This SkyLight Illuminations edition - the first publication of significant portions of The Forty Foundations of Religion in English - provides original translations of selected highlights accompanied by insightful commentary that makes the core message of this great spiritual master relevant to anyone seeking a balanced understanding of Islam.
Reflections on the Qur'an: Commentaries on Selected Verses
(This book presents such interpretations from a respected ...)
This book presents such interpretations from a respected Muslim scholar who explains verses for the modern age. Gülen is well-informed of the classical exegetical discipline; nevertheless, in this book he keeps his explanations short and to the point, not to tire away readers. The book does not cover all the verses of the Qur’an, but selected ones, that relate most to the human existence on earth, life after death, and stories revealed in the holy book.
(Love is a Verb follows a global movement of faithful Musl...)
Love is a Verb follows a global movement of faithful Muslims inspired by the teachings of Fethullah Gulen halfway around the globe. Preaching social activism, dialogue, education, and peace, Gulen has now inspired two generations of educators and humanitarian workers where they are most needed around the globe but couldn't escape from controversy in his home country and abroad. In 2013, Time magazine named Gulen as one of the most influential people in the world.
Fethullah Gülen is an Islamic scholar and thinker, and a prolific writer and poet. He is well-known as the leader of the Gulen movement.
Background
Fethullah Gülen was born on April 27, 1941, in a small village near Erzurum, in eastern Turkey, an area known for its conservative culture and Sufi traditions, and described by Gülen as a village where poverty, scarcity, and drought was prevalent.
Education
Fethullah Gülen completed his early secular education at primary school. However, his further formal schooling was prevented by his father’s appointment as an imam in a different province where, because of distance, secondary education was not then accessible to him. He received instead informal education from his parents and the scholars of his town and was introduced to Risale-i Nur through Nursi’s students. Gülen remembers that his first teacher was his mother, a Qur’an teacher in the village, who trained him in correct Qur’anic recitation. His father, Ramiz Efendi, was an imam with close connections to the Nakshibendi tarikat in Erzurum. He taught Gülen both Persian and Arabic, and gave him entrée to the world of Islamic thinkers such as al-Hasan al-Basri, Harith al-Mu-hasibi, al-Ghazali, Jelaluddin Rumi, Ahmed Faruk Sirhindi, Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi. Gülen later came under the tutelage of (Alvarli) Muhammad Lütfi Efendi, a member of the Kadiri Sufi order who, according to Gülen, greatly influenced his intellectual development.
In 1960, Gülen was granted official status as a preacher of the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he held posts in Edırne, Kırklareli, and İzmir, and the Aegean region. At the same time as providing fairly broad exposure to the different sub-cultural and urban systems of modern Turkey, this experience also informed his discourse with both general and particular acquaintances among his audience. Moreover, Gülen preached in coffee shops, village gatherings, workplaces, and organized camps for students in middle and high school. The subjects of his sermons ranged from education, science, Darwinism, economy, and social justice to more theological subjects of the Islamic faith, which later crystallized in his main argument: "our three greatest enemies are ignorance, poverty, and internal schism."
With the spread of his ideas on education and charitable support for needy students, Gülen inspired the establishment of a bursary and student hostel system known as "lighthouses" (ışık evleri). Support was received from local working and middle-class groups, which set up study circles around the ideas of Gülen. By these means, Hizmet ethics started to spread steadily across the whole Anatolian region, where his supporters, then barely a hundred working-class individuals, formed the core of what was later known as the Hizmet Movement.
The movement’s first university preparatory courses were established in 1974 in Manisa, where Gülen was posted at that time. Following the success of such initiatives, Gülen was called upon to preach in different parts of Turkey, where local communities were becoming enormously hopeful about the future of their children. Moreover, in 1979, Sızıntı started as a monthly journal, which, among other topics, expressed Gülen’s ideas about the reconciliation of faith with secular education, with the nation-state, and with democracy. Gülen provided the editorial section from the beginning, elaborating on the relationship between Islam, Sufism, and the meaning of faith in modern life.
In the 1980s Turkey, led by Turgut Özal, also witnessed an unprecedented economic and political liberalization that gave rise to a new class of technocrats, professionals, businessmen, and wealthy entrepreneurs, who combined religious conservatism with qualified education and profound orientation toward the Hizmet ethos as promoted by Gülen; this class found Gülen’s message acceptable due to his use of strong traditional Islamic arguments from the Qur’an and Sunnah (Kurani Makuliyet). In later decades this sector of society evolved into the "Anatolian bourgeoisie" that sets up and finances the Hizmet Movement’s schools and charitable organizations. With Özal’s new socio-economic policies, a "market-friendly religio-education movement" started to gain organizational and institutional momentum. Gülen’s sermons during the 1980s drew large crowds of supporters, who also videotaped his lectures and broadcast and transcribed them for the larger population of conservative Turks.
The social and cultural constituency for Gülen’s ideas was further multiplied after the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, and the consequent liberation of many Turkic nations in the Central Asian and Balkan regions. The concepts of tolerance, human rights, education, and dialogue, which had hitherto comprised the themes of Gülen’s writings, became ideally suitable for his new listeners in the multi-ethnic Turkic societies.
In 1994, the Journalists and Writers Foundation was established. Since the late 1990s, the Journalists and Writers Foundation has been contributing to the diffusion of Hizmet strategies of consultation and consensus-building through the Abant Platforms. These annual forums have engaged a wide network of academicians, journalists, and intellectuals from across the political spectrum in discussions about a national and/or international issue. At the end of each meeting, the platform releases a statement, which has been reached by consensus.
Also in 1994, Gülen made visits to preach in Turkish mosques and community centers around the world, especially in the United States and European countries. Gülen-inspired schools, media enterprises, and business associations began to spread in the Balkan and Central Asian regions. Gülen also inspired the establishment of a chain of economic and media outlets, including the Association for Solidarity in Business Life (ISHAD) and the Businessmen’s Association for Freedom (HURSIAD) in 1993, and the Turkish Businessmen and Industrialists Confederation (TUSKON), all of which paved the way toward establishing schools and trade initiatives all over the world, and also created mutual interests between the movement and subsequent Turkish regimes.
Gülen’s positive views on inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue had been expressed publicly as far back as 1998 with his visit to Pope John Paul II and continuously since that time. The 9/11 attacks on the United States gave further impetus to Hizmet’s dialogue work after the movement and its participants were recognized by Western policymakers as a potential means of promoting understanding and coexistence within Western societies - mainly between Muslim communities and the larger "indigenous" community. Hizmet further extended its model of "Sufi-type modern spirituality" to the post- 9/11 world and created an immensely active transnational network of dialogue NGOs and educational services in many areas of the world previously untouched by its work.
(Love is a Verb follows a global movement of faithful Musl...)
2014
Politics
Fethullah Gülen claimed that he is totally against Turkish involvement in the Syrian Civil War. But he also supports military intervention against ISIL.
He supported the Turkish bid to join the European Union.
Views
Though simple in outward appearance, Fethullah Gülen is original in thought and action. He embraces all humanity and is deeply averse to unbelief, injustice, and deviation. His belief and feelings are profound, and his ideas and approach to problems are both wise and rational. A living model of love, ardor, and feeling, he is extraordinarily balanced in his thoughts, acts, and treatment of matters.
Turkish intellectuals and scholars acknowledge, either tacitly or explicitly, that he is one of the most serious and important thinkers and writers, and among the wisest activists of twentieth-century Turkey or even of the Muslim world. But such accolades of his leadership of a new Islamic intellectual, social, and spiritual revival - a revival with the potential to embrace great areas of the world - do not deter him from striving to be no more than a humble servant of God and a friend to all. The desire for fame is the same as show and ostentation, a "poisonous honey" that extinguishes the heart's spiritual liveliness, is one of the golden rules he follows.
Gülen has spent his adult life voicing the cries and laments, as well as the beliefs and aspirations, of Muslims in particular and of humanity in general. He bears his own sorrows, but those of others crush him. He feels each blow delivered at humanity to be delivered first at his own heart. He feels himself so deeply and inwardly connected to creation that once he said: "Whenever I see a leaf fall from its branch in autumn, I feel as much pain as if my arm had been amputated."
In his speeches and writings, Gülen envisions a twenty-first century in which we shall witness the birth of a spiritual dynamic that will revitalize long-dormant moral values; an age of tolerance, understanding, and international cooperation that will ultimately lead, through inter-cultural dialogue and a sharing of values, to a single, inclusive civilization. In the field of education, he has spearheaded the establishment of many charitable organizations to work for the welfare of the community, both within and without Turkey. He has inspired the use of mass media, notably television, to inform the public, of matters of pressing concern to them, individually and collectively.
Gülen believes the road to justice for all is dependent on the provision of an adequate and appropriate universal education. Only then will there be sufficient understanding and tolerance to secure respect for the rights of others. To this end, he has, over the years, encouraged the social elite and community leaders, powerful industrialists as well as small businessmen, to support quality education. With donations from these sources, educational trusts have been able to establish many schools, both in Turkey and abroad.
Gülen has stated that in the modern world the only way to get others to accept your ideas is by persuasion. He describes those who resort to force as being intellectually bankrupt; people will always demand freedom of choice in the way they run their affairs and in their expression of their spiritual and religious values. Democracy, Gülen argues, in spite of its many shortcomings, is now the only viable political system, and people should strive to modernize and consolidate democratic institutions in order to build a society where individual rights and freedoms are respected and protected, where equal opportunity for all is more than a dream.
Quotations:
"A person is truly a human if he or she learns, and teaches, and inspires others. It is difficult to regard as truly human someone who is ignorant and has no desire to learn."
"One will never reach distant shores, if he chooses to remain upon the dock, In fear his little ship of dreams may be dashed against the rocks."
Membership
Fethullah Gülen is the founder member of the Journalists and Writers Foundation (1994), he participated in interfaith gatherings and promoted dialogue through a number of events organized by this foundation in 1994-1998. He also is an Honorary President of Rumi Forum, Washington D.C. (1999-present).
Journalists and Writers Foundation
1994 - present
Personality
As a preacher, Gülen was charismatic and inspirational, though by no means as moderate as he later became.
According to Gulen, the essential purpose of teaching and learning is to carry our faith to the horizon of marifat (divine knowledge), to deepen our knowledge with love, and to soar above by gaining His pleasure with our voluntary and devoted spirit in the path of His blessed word, never pausing even for a moment.
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Muhammad Lütfi Efendi, Immanuel Kant, Albert Einstein, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus
Writers
Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, William Shakespeare
Connections
Muhammed Fethullah Gülen never married and has no children.
Cross-cultural Dialogue on the Virtues: The Contribution of Fethullah Gülen
This book explores the development of the influential worldwide Hizmet movement inspired by the Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen, known for his moderate Islamic emphasis on peaceful relations among diverse people. It provides a detailed study of Gülen’s account of the virtues and argues that they provide the key to understanding this thinker and the movement he inspired, from its initial establishment of hospitality houses through the growth of worldwide schools, hospitals, media outlets, charitable associations, and dialogue centers.
2014
Fethullah Gulen: A Life of Hizmet
In this first critical biography of Fethullah Gulen in English, historian Jon Pahl takes us on a journey where we discover wisdom and controversy, from 1940's Turkey to the United States in the twenty-first century.