Gülen's Difference From Surus, Similarity to Mevlana

Last Updated on Saturday, 24 November 2007 04:35 by Abdülhamit Bilici, Today's Zaman Saturday, 24 November 2007 04:31

"A dialogue center was founded 17 years ago at the school of divinity where I was teaching. I was to work there. The issue we were to prioritize was the dialogue between Muslims and Christians. We were in need of Muslims for this dialogue. We wanted this relationship to be institutional and permanent. While looking for Muslim interlocutors, we walked into a mosque and spoke to the imam. We decided to get together on a regular basis. However, each meeting was attended by different people and the newcomers wouldn't know anything about the previous meeting. We had no productive suggestions, nor were we able to cover any distance, because the only people to come to our country from the Islamic world were workers. There was thus no one to talk to on an intellectual level. But I met these particular ladies seven years ago. Wow! They were Muslims, female, and what's more, they were intellectuals. Furthermore, they themselves were in favor of dialogue. I got excited and asked them where they were from. They were Turks. They told me they had founded an association to promote dialogue and that they were students of Fethullah Gülen. For the first time in 10 years, we finally had intellectual interlocutors. We started meeting. What followed their dialogue iftar dinners were symposia held in the name of the Prophet Abraham. Each time, they came with an original proposal. They took the initiative."

Dutch Professor of Divinity Pim Valkenberg was talking about his first encounter with the Gülen movement in the presence of over 30 Western scientists. His words revealed the situation of millions of Muslims in Europe and also revealed the negative image they had; however, they also summarized the distinctive place of the Gülen movement within this scene.

An introverted society was beginning to take action and initiative, shocking its Western counterparts with its projects. The puzzlement and astonishment of the Dutch professor reflect the first reactions of everyone who first encounters this movement in the West. This is because they are coming face-to-face with a movement that is presenting solutions to problems even they themselves were afflicted by, although they had always viewed the Islamic world as nothing but a source of the problem, partly under the influence of the negative images of Islam. They see that this movement does not discriminate against any language, religion, race or country.

The chief factor that brought together tens of sociologists for a two-day conference at one of the most prestigious and well-established educational institutes of Europe, Erasmus University, was the curiosity to understand this universal project represented by the people of Anatolia. Upon the call for such a conference, invitations to which had been published in serious science magazines, 170 scientists sent papers, and this number was narrowed down to 32 by a team of 17 professors. A book inclusive of all these 32 papers was already prepared before the conference as a 530-page work. This was not a brochure that only brought together the submitted papers; it was rather a serious academic work published by Leeds Metropolitan University, and which immediately made it to the library records. Professor Tom Gage, one of those present at the conference, said: "I have been attending such scientific conferences for 50 years. However, this is the first time I have seen the submitted papers published beforehand."

The event at Erasmus University was the seventh conference where the Gülen movement was assessed by world-famous academics. The first one of these conferences had been held in 2001 at Georgetown University under the organization of John Esposito, and the latest one was held at the end of October in London. At the London conference, inaugurated in the House of Lords and continued at the London School of Economics, 49 scientists had submitted papers. While some of the papers submitted to the university -- which carries the name of Erasmus, considered among the pioneers of the line of thought that gave birth to the European Union and who gave his name to the student exchange program of the EU -- analyzed the education and dialogue activities of the movement, others likened Gülen to historical figures like Spinoza or Mevlana or living people like Abdulkerim Suruş and Tarık Ramazan. For instance, an Iranian academic in his paper focused on how Gülen was integrated with his society while Suruş detached himself from Iranian society. Professor Thomas Michel analyzed the projections of the ideals represented by Mevlana on Gülen. According to Michel, Gülen's ideals are no different from those of Mevlana, whose views are told with a metaphor: "A geometry compass, whose needle is stationary and whose pencil tip is wandering around the world."

These conferences held in the most serious educational institutions of the West with the attendance of highly venerated academics are important in many regards. First of all, the West, which always dwells on the negative examples from the Islamic world, is beginning to think about what a movement that originated in Turkey has been doing in the name of humanity all over the world. As they delve further into the movement, academics see that legendary people like Mevlana and Yunus have not yet become history and that their legacy and heritage live on. Secondly, many academics must get to know Turkish people during the process of writing their papers and also automatically learn about our values, like selflessness and heroic generosity. Thirdly, the number of academic works written on the movement is increasing, as Professor Michel points out. This way, the achievements of a movement, which has taken on global characteristics, is being translated into the universal language. Fourthly, on account of these conferences, the movement calls on the world of science to "analyze and criticize itself objectively." This courageous attitude shows that the movement has nothing to hide and indicates its level of maturity.

In the meantime, as the world gets to know the movement better, the conspiracies of the marginal groups programmed to harm this movement are frustrated. I wish all the movements and institutions in Turkey were able to demonstrate this courage and thus see for themselves how the civilized world views their undertakings.