Gülen Conferences as Venues for Dialogue

Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 May 2009 07:58 by Kerim Balcı, Today's Zaman Tuesday, 26 May 2009 07:51

Conferences are not places where great accomplishments of social science take place. Rarely are they stages of presentation of prior accomplishments of social scientists.

They are usually venues where ideas and scholars meet to set the first stone of a future building. Conferences are not places where a final knot is tied to a continuous string of social acts and their studies; they are, in fact, places where an initial impetus is put in for future study.

That is how I feel about the Potsdam conference that will discuss the possible contributions of the Gülen movement to the solution of the integration problems of Muslims in Europe in particular and the West in general. I will be in Berlin for two days to observe that initial impetus being put into a new kind of discussion, and I am sure I will return with more questions in my mind searching for new answers accompanied by those that will have been answered.

That is my subjective way of perceiving a conference.

The Potsdam conference is going to ask many questions about the Gülen movement. The list of participants shoots down, from the very beginning, claims that these kinds of conferences are organized by sympathizers of the movement for hagiographic reasons. Two names were of particular interest to me: Walter Homolka, a rabbi, professor and executive director of the Abraham Geiger College at the University of Potsdam, and Professor Admiel Kosman of the same college.

The Abraham Geiger College is Germany's only rabbinical seminary and was founded in 1999. It is famous for having trained the first rabbis since the Holocaust. Rabbi Homolka is a Progressive Jew with quite an impressive reputation in Western academia. Professor Kosman is an Orthodox Jew, born in Haifa to a religious family. He teaches the Talmud and the Halacha at the Abraham Geiger College. He is also an established poet dealing with religious issues.

Both these names are now looking at the Gülen movement as a possible solution to the problems of the world. Rabbi Homolka was kind enough to answer my "Why Gülen and why now?" question.

"The issue of Muslim participation in today's Europe is of great importance for the design of a pluralistic future. The Potsdam conference is dedicated to a crucial question: Is it possible for Muslims to live religiously and yet to be integrated into a democratic society that is characterized by the values of the Enlightenment? In the past, the Jews of Europe met the same challenge, about two centuries ago. Our experience in Germany was particularly thorny and ambiguous because the then-majority society was not open for us, Jews. Our conference is trying to trace intellectual possibilities so that the integration of Muslims today can succeed. In particular, we are interested in the Gülen movement as a possible bridge between cultures," he said.

Professor Kosman replied to my question, in a way, positing my belief that conferences are new openings for future possibilities and not final says on past matters. "Our main intention in building this project is to open a window for a new and fresh dialogue between Islam, Judaism and Christianity. We think that … the children of Abraham should find out in the ancient religious sources a set of reasons that will help them to build in the future a different religious type: a religious person who sees the main goal of religious life in being open to the 'other'; a human, sensitive, religious person who holds a set of values which include welcoming differences, respecting disagreements and accepting the variations of human expressions as a divine blessing. In this respect we see the work of Gülen as an essential one for our generation. We believe that the academic discussion is an important stage in clarifying issues that can later be brought to the different educational systems. That, we hope, will help create in the future a new generation of religious leaders -- rabbis, imams and priests who will be able to see openness, a tolerant approach and dialogue as the main commandment of God to the children of Abraham and to the human race all over the world," he wrote in response to my question.

These answers are quite telling. The Gülen movement is no longer an asset of the Turkish-Muslim context. Fethullah Gülen is already a universal value whose ideas and activities open new horizons to non-Turks and non-Muslims all around the world. A particular presentation that refers to Gülen as a "de-colonial political thinker" attracted my attention. De-coloniality is quite a new and flourishing area of social studies, and a study of Gülen's epistemology within the paradigm of de-coloniality can certainly open new horizons to the future of political sciences. But, I have to listen to Dr. Klas Grinell of Gothenburg first, to see whether his presentation is as brain-shaking as his title.