What is Islam's Gulen movement?

[Gerald]

Turkey's Gulen movement, which promotes service to the common good, may have grown into the world's biggest Muslim network. Is it the modern face of Islam, or are there more sinister undercurrents?

From Kenya to Kazakhstan, a new Islamic network is attracting millions of followers - and billions of dollars.

Inspired by a little-known Turkish imam, the Gulen movement is linked to more than 1,000 schools in 130 countries as well as think tanks, newspapers, TV and radio stations, universities - and even a bank.

This massive network is unlike anything else. It has no formal structure, no visible organisation and no official membership.

Its supporters say they simply work together, in a loosely affiliated alliance inspired by the message of charismatic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who promotes a tolerant Islam which emphasises altruism, hard work and education.

Turkish businessmen are attracted by what they see as his international outlook and pragmatic approach to issues like using credit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13503361


Note: 25 May 2011 Last updated at 00:04 GMT

[Gerald]

Certainly no news ... but there is big money in these networks and organizations.

[Skybird]

The Gulen movement tries to give itself an open-mionded, tolerant image and claims to modernise Islamic thoughts. But if you read the writings of its founder Fettulah Gulen, you soon realise that this guy was ultra-orthodox and most repressive on women, basing all his do's and dont'S on the Shariah directly. Turkey sees it as a hidden sword for something that could be called Islamic education jihad, meaning a global offensive to influence public opinion as well as individuals' attitudes in favour of orthodox Islamic values coming along under new, deceptive labels. The Turkish state is massively involved in supressing and preventing publication of critical books and reasearches on the Gulen movement, therefore.

Don't believe their smiling, "modern" surface". They are extremely orthodox in their real value basis, and are anything but "reforming" or "modern" or "tolerant". But they are acting very clever.

In Wetsern countries and Germany, the issue gets realised only slowly.

I had red some of Gulen'S work in a commented edition longer time ago. I perceived it as very underhanded a threat. It tries to anchor most archaic and fundamentalist Islamic values by relabeling them while leaving their content untouched. Again, Gulen bases all his permissions and prohibitions directly on the tradition of the Shariah. This alone should tell you all you need to know.

[Tribesman]

This alone should tell you all you need to know.
Skybird wrote that post so that alone should tell you all you need to know about what was written there as it is about two things he really hates with a blind passion Turkey and Islam.
Its a pity Gelen lives in the states as if he was in the EU Sky could have had a real fit about the secret turkish islamic EU conspiracy

[Gerald]

Sky .. a live and mobile libraries, :DL

[Skybird]

Sky .. a live and mobile libraries, :DL

Ah no, just by chance knowing about it a bit. It got pretty widespread in Germany, without anybody noticing it, globally probably far more influential than the Mili Görus movement which is more focussing on certain hotspots in the world like Germany, but not even half as known. Most people you ask usually never heared of Gulen, or do not care - which makes it's spreading so dangerous and unopposed. Most people do not critically question their surface. It's true that for example they prfeer to build schools over building mosques - but one has to know that this is in order to educate Muslims better to defend Islam against opposition in hosting nations, and to enforce it in ways that are not physically violent, but by debate that should neutralise the opposition to Islam over its own values of freedom and democracy. Still, Gulen in the end argues for the establishing of a Shariah-basing value system, which makes him an extremely clever orthodox, but still a an orthodox.

The movement is spreading rapidly amongst Turks living in Germany. So do the ultranationalistic Turkish Grey Wolves, and Mili Görus. They all have close ties to the Turkish ministry of religion, and the AKP circles around Erdoghan & Gang.

Several critical ex-Muslim academics and orientalists as well as apostates attack Gulen movement ferociously. They sometimes compare Gulen to an Islamic Scientology, or a secret organisation of the Turkish state comparing to Opus Dei. To some part I agree, there are similiarities, though Gulen Movement is no 100% equivalent to any of the two.

[Gerald]

Ah no, just by chance knowing about it a bit. It got pretty widespread in Germany, without anybody noticing it, globally probably far more influential than the Mili Görus movement which is more focussing on certain hotspots in the world like Germany, but not even half as known. Most people you ask usually never heared of Gulen, or do not care - which makes it's spreading so dangerous and unopposed. Good .. I appreciate your comment about this, and it's always good to get info from you, :up:

[Skybird]

I just added a bit. ;)

[Gerald]

I just added a bit. ;) Yeah ... but it is good and extends the value of the thread, :03:

[tater]

What the movement says about apostasy or women would be all I'd need to hear to decide how hateful it is. So what do they think about apostasy?

Like any other set of ideas, there should be no "special" place where ideas are respected without being fully examined. Saying that Muhammad was god's prophet requires every bit as much proof as saying F=GmM/r^2 does.

[Gerald]

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/5957/muhammadtree.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/23/muhammadtree.jpg/)

[Skybird]

Tater,

"hateful" you said. It is more diofficult than just this, this is no Hezbollah type of schozophrenia to feed the poor and maintain hostials while supporting terrorism on the other side. Gulen is different, and not that obviously violent. The abuse lies not in violant acts and terror, but infiltrating people'S mind and infesting it with Islamic values with a smile on their face, and making Islam en vogue in public general opinion and perception by relabelling its values while not changing their content at all. Do not think in terms of violent jihad here.

The Gulen movement subsidises a wide range of social activities, from financially helping students to running schools, hospital staff, also media and TV channels. It attracts to many mainstream Muslims becasue it seems not to focus on the institutions of relgion, and mosque building. However, if you want to benefit from helps and assistances and subsidies by Gulen, you need to agree to live a strict Muslim life basing on tight and strict Islamic rules, and you are asked for daily participation in group discussions of Islamic ideas and Sharia concepts as well as Gulen'S ideas, as well as conducting your daily prayers and participating in group prayers as well. The movement bases on Sharia concepots and Gulen'S descriptiuns of these, and from what I have red from Gulen longer time ago (which was a commented academic analysis by I think an Egyptian professor quoting him in depth), Gulen defends the restrictive and supressive views of Islam on women as well as the demand of Islam to claim dimoinance in all the world, which is to be acchieved not by violence or terror, but turning Muslims by education into successful people that can influence their social enviuronment to turn Islamic due to their success and social prestige.

It is jihad by individual social success stories that should be enabled by education of people that includes both profane competence (in a profession for example, as well as the customs and ways of living the individual is emebbeded in in his living place) as well as competence in arguing in defence for Islamic worldviews, to outtalk oppoosing views. The goal nevertheless is the Islamisation of societies, and the spreading of Islam, in its practical implementation and orientation defined and understood on the basis of Sharia.

It is very deceptive, and seems to present - on the surface - right that smiling friendly face of Islam that uncritical Westerns always want to see in Islam. Nevertheless, below this shiny surface, the intention still is rigid, determined and carried by supremacism, and is supressive on tolerance and women. As I said: the basis is Sharia's views and values. It is easy to get blinded and to forget this when reading about Gulen movement's "modern" appearance. It is not modern, just very deceptive and infiltrating in its clever ways of trying to ensure its goals.

Also, never ignore this, Gulen is a secret organisation that is very very closely associated with the Turkish state. It is a tool of Turkish foreign policies to widen Turkish in fluence, and Islamic influence, in other countries.

[joegrundman]

It is jihad by individual social success stories that should be enabled by education of people that includes both profane competence (in a profession for example, as well as the customs and ways of living the individual is emebbeded in in his living place) as well as competence in arguing in defence for Islamic worldviews, to outtalk oppoosing views. The goal nevertheless is the Islamisation of societies, and the spreading of Islam, in its practical implementation and orientation defined and understood on the basis of Sharia.


broadly speaking, this is a perfectly acceptable way for them to promote their world-view/faith/culture whatever in the great global market place of ideas.

if they wish to say we are best, and to justify it by the ability of muslims to lead by example and for others to look at them and say, yes indeed, we agree muslims do seem better and then to emulate is fine.

The problem is not this.

The problem is the evident inferiority and unpleasantness of islam as a religio-cultural thang, that is at times being propagated instead by violent, divisive and highly intolerant means.

So if in fact they have had a sea-change of opinion about how best to spread islam, and they feel the approach is to show their superior example - what can i say, good luck to them! More likely i feel they will expose their own inadequacy and revert back to violence, anti-semitism and the rest that we have become so wearily used to.

[Skybird]

While Islam as an ideology educates man's mind to be ignorrant and stupid, this does not mean that every person, no matter race, that got born in a Muslim country and to Muslim parents, is stupid from birth on, by genes. There is a difference in saying "Islam makes people dumb" and saying for example "Turks are dumb (by genes)". I say the first, and never have said the latter, and will not.

However. The social success of the representative of any ideology must not necessarily display the superiority of that ideology. Therefore, one should be careful to see social and professional success as indices for the the characteristic dogma of said ideology. In WWII, the competence of German engineers was proverbial, and many Nazis in uniform were known to have very polite, even charming manners and good education. But that does not change the fact that the ideology of Nazism nevertheless was the most wicked and evil one you can imagine. German engineering was no hint for the truth of the claim that German Aryans are the Herrenrasse of the world. It just meant that German engineers - were competent engineers. Comparing to that, being a successful business man or running a school is something that others, non-Muslim people can acchieve, too. It does not mean that education by Islamic dogma is in any way superior.

Where it leads to when education and cultural life is depending on Islamic dogma, one can see in the pitiful state Muhammedan societies degenerated to in the centuries after Muhammad, when the once existing superiority in scientific and economic potency of Arab culture more and more fell victim to censorship, stagnation, paralysis and fatalism. It showed in the corrupt regimes they had, in the poor state of agriculture, in the primitivity their trading systems had remained in. The great offence Islam mourns until today for, was that the French arrived in Egypt under Napoleon, and the Muslim world suddenly had to learn that in all their imagined uniqueness and supöeriroity they indeed were hopelessly inferior to the other people in the world. This caused a trauma that has lived on until today - but strangely it has not led to critical self-reflection, just to blind accusations directed at the others. Until today, any progressive tendency, in a materialistic or consumer oriented understanding, they need to export from the West and increasingly the Asian markets: the goods, the experts to maintain them, the construction workers to install them, the architects to plan them. Same is true for medicine, medical treatment, and scientific competence. Almost all of that is not Islamic mind'S brain-fruit.

Muslimg-born people can be successful in their profession - if they want - in a market segment or a business, or in integrating themselves. But that is not because of their Islamic faith, but despite of it. The content of Islamic teaching and Shariah's dogma is focussed on preventing adaptation to anything that is not Islam, and to compensate one's own inferiority by destroying the superiority of the other. Allah and his realsied word (=Quran)are perfect, so is Islam - how could one dare to think that in Islam's views there is something to be imporved, questioned, being turned into something better...?